The State of the Industry
Europe · The Middle East · Africa · India By Christian Annoque
It has long been considered that, for worldwide telecommunications traffic there are 3 major trunk routes: Atlantic (EuropeAmericas), Pacific (Americas-Far East) and Europe-Middle East-Far East (or the EMAI region – Europe, Middle-East, Africa and India). This paper attempts to give an overview of the latter market from the viewpoint of submarine telecommunications systems; a brief history, current activities and, hopefully, a glimpse of the future.
Growth This year aside, the global telecommunications market has recently seen growth rates unprecedented throughout its long history. This has been due to several factors all of which pointed to sustained and continued high growth well into the
future. On the back of this the world submarine market has increased five-fold from 1996 to 2000 ($1.1bn to $6bn). It would appear that some of the usual historical drivers have been responsible for this growth, for example the requirement for additional capacity and the introduction of a new technology (DWDM), but in addition there were other powerful factors at work. In Europe, privatisation and deregulation precipitated increased competition and reduced prices thereby stimulating growth in traffic, not only locally but also on major international routes leading from Europe. The growth of the Internet has also been a contributing factor (although on a more global scale) and finally the fact that markets are, for the most part, no longer monopolistic led to the reality of constructing and operating 31
private submarine systems for commercial gain as opposed to building of infrastructure to serve community needs. However we can consider that the days of easily predictable slow traffic growths have long since left us and the move away from monopolistic consortiums to private systems has meant that business plans and system designs have become more and more complicated.
EMAI As for all regions, in EMAI the necessity for submarine systems in the past has been governed by the growth of voice traffic, geography and politics. However, unlike the other two major routes (Atlantic and Pacific), the EMAI route is not two continents divided by an ocean but rather an old trade route strewn with countries