ANALYTICS
BY KIERAN CLARK
KEEPING UP THE PACE
B
(in Tbps)
width international connections, and Cable Map, Online Cable Map and andwidth demand continues to to the almost exponential increase in Industry Report find their roots. explode as both businesses and demand for mobile and cloud services As new systems come into service consumers increasingly rely on cloud observed over the last few years. These services. Over-The-Top (OTT) providers and existing systems are upgraded, factors show little signs of slowing there is a continuing upward trend in continue to increase their percentage of down, so there is a strong expectation global capacity to address the world’s overall telecommunications traffic and that demand will continue to rise at a are driving more and more cables to meet demand for more telecoms services. rapid pace in the coming years. This is mostly due to an ever-increastheir own demands. New markets are Capacity increased by 35 percent in ing demand for low latency, high bandconnecting to the global telecommunicaboth 2017 and 2018, comtions network and continued depared to an increase of 24 sire for alternate routes to provide 3000 percent in 2016. There were route diversity is keeping new only 9 systems that entered system activity relatively high. 2500 service in 2018 compared to All of this adds up to a huge 2000 the 15 in 2017 yet a simneed for the submarine fiber 1500 ilar capacity increase was industry to stay ahead of the observed. (Figure 1) With curve and continue to provide 1000 easy and cheap access to additional capacity to meet 500 100G wavelength upgrades these growing needs. Can we and 200G beginning to enter keep up the pace? 0 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 regular service, this comes as Welcome to SubTel Forum’s little surprise. New technolannual Subsea Capacity issue. Figure 1: Global System Capacity by Year, 2014-2018 ogy such as C+L band and Every May, we aim to take the Space Division Multiplexing industry’s pulse by looking at (SDM) alongside an increase the future of our section of Transpacific in fiber pair counts has also the telecoms market. Specificontributed to this capacity cally, how much cable owners 15% 19% Transatlantic increase – despite the lower are planning to add to the 1% Indian Ocean number of new cables. ever-growing pool of capacity 18% Currently, the EMEA and what technologies are EMEA 17% region has the largest share being implemented. The data AustralAsia of global capacity at 21 used in this article is obtained 9% Arctic percent. This continues the from the public domain and 21% downward trend observed is tracked by the ever evolving Americas from a year ago when the STF Analytics database, where EMEA region accounted products like the Almanac, Figure 2: Current Capacity by Region
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE