WAVELENGTH UPGRADES – AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE BY KIERAN CLARK
U
ntil 2015, wavelength upgrades were an immensely popular option for submarine cable owners. The wide variety of upgrade suppliers resulted in fiercely competitive prices, allowing owners to increase capacity for extremely low cost. However, in the last 3 years the market dynamic for wavelength upgrades has completely changed. There are few systems left that would benefit from the jump to 100G, and many upgrades over the last 3 years are simply adding channels and go largely unreported. Very little has changed in the cable system upgrade market from a
10
Systems Upgraded by Year 2011-2017 19
20 18
14 12
16
15
16 12
10 7
8 5
6
4
4 2 0
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
Figure 1: Systems Upgrade by Year, 2011-2017
2017