THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF GLOBALIZATION BY PAUL SAVILL
D
igital transformation may be one of the most hyped phrases in the industry, but it’s important to remember why it’s such a big deal. And it has to do with perhaps the next most overused term: globalization. Traditionally, globalization has been described as the trade of global goods: electronics, toys, clothing and anything else you can think of that comes with a “Made in XX country” tag or sticker. The trade of goods has seen a noticeable decline in capital flows for nearly 10 years; however, that doesn’t mean globalization has peaked. In fact, McKinsey Global Institute released research revealing digital flows now exert a larger impact on GDP growth than the trade in
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goods. In fact, its research shows “the amount of cross-border bandwidth that is used has grown 45 times larger since 2005” and is projected to increase nine-fold by 2020. To put that into dollars, data and information comprised $2.8 trillion of the $7.8 trillion in global goods, services, finance, people and data that contributed to the world GDP in 2014.
In short, globalization wouldn’t be increasing without digital transformation, and digital transformation wouldn’t be so important without globalization. What’s more: none of it would be possible without the continued innovation and expansion of this global networking platform, an integral piece of which is the collec-
tion of submarine cables that allow cross-continent communication.
Leading the charge on the use and expansion of submarine cables is, unsurprisingly, internet content providers like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, all of which not only use subsea cables extensively, but also have invested in the development of new submarine cable systems. It makes sense when you consider the incredible amounts of data these content providers and their millions of users generate. Of course, ISPs play an integral role in the deployment and management of subsea cables, and we at CenturyLink work a lot with content providers to package and deliver data internationally.