FEATURE
SUSTAINABLY ADDRESSING GLOBAL BANDWIDTH GROWTH BY BRIAN LAVALLÉE
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ndustry analysts at TeleGeography forecast that global used international bandwidth is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 33% between 2022 and 2029, roughly doubling every 2.5 years. However, the carbon footprint of networks that address this growth simply cannot scale linearly from socioeconomic and environmental perspectives. This means a “bending of the curve” is required in that the carbon footprint grows at a lower rate than associated bandwidth grows. In other words, the watts/bit, space/bit, and cost/bit decrease as network capacity increases to address global bandwidth growth, which shows no signs of abating over the next decade. There’s no “Plan B” for submarine networks because there’s no technology today, or on the innovation horizon, that can reliably and cost-effectively scale to submarine cables based on fiber-optic transmission technology. This means that as an industry, we must continually evolve what we’ve been doing for decades until the next eureka technology moment. How can our industry reliably, cost-effectively, and sustainably scale to address bandwidth demand growth between continental landmasses? By adopting and adapting
several ingenious technologies and network architectures available today and tomorrow. These technologies span the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model, from the Physical layer to the Application layer. We’ll discuss options available to submarine cable operators to maintain pace with global bandwidth growth and do so in a cost-effective and sustainable manner, which are often seen as contradictory design and business goals.
OPTICAL BYPASS, A GAMECHANGER
Over a decade ago, modems based on coherent optical transmission were introduced, initially to address long-haul terrestrial networks, say from New York to Los Angeles. However, after a field trial over an existing submarine wet plant, the proverbial lightbulb went off, as coherent modems provided better performance than incumbent modems using traditional Intensity-Modulation Direct-Detection (IMDD) On-Off Keying (OOK). This field trial was a monumental turning point in the submarine network industry and changed how submarine wet plants were designed, built, and maintained right up to today. ImproveMAY 2023 | ISSUE 130 53