The credit crisis may well result in more collaboration, with companies working together to share building costs. The Unity Project is an example of such a model - Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI Corporation, Pacnet and SingTel are sharing the cost of building an undersea cable from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
The New Submarine Paradigm
After the collapse of the previous submarine cable boom at the end of 2001, BuddeComm predicted a revival in this market before the end of the decade. The first signs began to appear in around 2004, coinciding with an increasing demand for bandwidth. We were reasonably confident in this prediction, as the submarine market is fairly predictable, due to its relatively lengthy planning and building cycles.
By Paul Budde and Kylie Wansink
The demand for bandwidth continues to steadily increase. Around the world, the Internet is becoming more and more important to both the economy and society. Web 2.0 services have also fuelled the demand for bandwidth as users embrace online video, music and voice.
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In response, there have been more announcements of proposed submarine cable system build-outs in recent years than in any other time since the last boom of 1998-2001. This activity in
There was actually nothing wrong with the concept behind the dotcom era, but, as is now being demonstrated in the subprime housing market, greed can take over in the financial sector and ruin things, for a time at least.
the submarine cable sector continued throughout 2008 with many cable build-out announcements coming from around the world. Network upgrades were also on the agenda for some existing systems. The impact of the global credit crisis on the submarine cable sector in 2009 cannot yet be fully determined as many current projects are already funded. There are however many planned projects still to be funded that may well suffer as a result.
Dotcom was all about new applications that would generate the next level of revenues for the ICT industry. The subscription-based model for telephony and Internet services was approaching its due-by date and new models were needed. The dotcomers had the right vision at the time, but the infrastructure needed to deliver those applications was not available. And without the necessary national infrastructure the demand for international traffic declined, creating havoc in the submarine telecoms market. But then broadband infrastructure became more available and applications such as Google, YouTube, MySpace and FaceBook