FEATURE obtain affordable capacity can now do so on their own be they a country, a global ISP, a member of the exclusive “Big Data” club.
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further accelerator to the retirement of older systems? Recurrent operating costs can make older systems uneconomic, and industry commentators have already highlighted this happening already as a result of higher capacity DWDM systems. Might SDM reduce the number of cables in say the Atlantic or Pacific for the reasons above and therefore reduce resilience and increase vulnerability, deliberate or accidental, as users look to rationalise networks for lower costs but with fewer paths? What will be the impact on system suppliers, and optical transmission equipment vendors? Could the enormous capacity of the SDM systems make the big data ‘system sponsors’ seek out partners to share the financial risk? Perhaps bringing new entrants to the wholesale market especially entities already involved with digital infrastructure investment. Some such investors are looking to diversify from towers and data centres but have shied away from subsea in the past but with a large part of the project cost covered by a deep pockets sponsor, they may see these opportunities as potentially profitable and less risky.
For the first time, it is no longer prohibitively expensive to buy what is in effect your own tailor-made private subsea cable. Something which can be plugged into your existing network, running to your own demands without the need to outsource that last missing piece. I would speculate that this brings fibre pair ownership within easy reach of the major international banks and other global financial services companies, major airlines, global energy companies or entertainment content providers/sporting event rights holders. Markets where major corporations traditionally had to go to carriers or similar to provide their global network services. Additionally, data centre titans like Equinix or carrier-neutral platform providers like DE-CIX or India’s Lightstorm would seem to be ideal customers for open access fibre pairs giving them more control and more capacity. Because of the ever-evolving nature of communications, it is reasonable to speculate that there are other digital services companies still ‘under the radar’ that need large amounts of capacity and low latency. Discrete fibre pair ownership will facilitate newer enterprises make that big step from dependency to independence for digital transport more easily than in the past and allowing them to access economies of scale once denied to market entrants. It is a similar issue for countries, especially smaller ones, getting capacity on the scale 2Africa can deliver would have been completely prohibitive for some of the states on this route with conventional systems. Another attraction is knowing exactly where your data is going, or more accurately, not going. Competition and suspicion between countries is a historical inevitability and is not going away anytime soon.
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SUMMARY THOUGHTS
JOHN TIBBLES has spent a working lifetime in global telecoms much of it in the subsea cable arena where he held senior positions responsible for subsea investments and operations at Cable and Wireless and MCI WorldCom and as an internal advisor consultant to Reach and Telstra Reach. John spent many years working for C&W in Bermuda and established the first private subsea cable offshore company and has worked extensively with both consortia and private system models. He has a wide background and expertise in most commercial matters of international telecoms and since ‘retiring’ he has remained active in the industry as a consultant, commentator and at times a court appointed expert and has been a panellist and moderator at international events.
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SDM makes large scale capacity much more affordable; SDM will allow much more connectivity to the major nodes of the global network from the developing world as smaller nations can afford such large-scale connectivity SDM will change the market dynamics between the major nodes allowing new market entrants, for whom long haul data transport is not their major business, to economically up- gauge their own networks. Will the huge cost advantage of SDM cables be a
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CONCLUSION?
“Surely you will never fill a system that size?” This is a question many of us have heard from senior management or investors; but we did. So, a couple of questions to end with: Q1 Will SDM disrupt the current market structure for subsea capacity? History tells us Probably Yes. Q2. SDM is a major step change but just how many fibres can you get in a system without heat dissipation problems or repeaters being too unwieldy for deployment or recovery. Those constraints allied to optical technology approaching the Shannon limit beg the question have we reached a development plateau? History tells us Probably No. STF
