Global Undersea Bandwidth Growth Shifts to Emerging Regions

Though overall demand for international bandwidth grew 39 percent in 2012, supply grew most strongly on routes connecting to emerging markets in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, TeleGeography says.

While bandwidth demand on the trans-Atlantic route--long the world’s highest-capacity route-- increased 36 percent annually between 2007 and 2012, demand for bandwidth from the United States to Latin America grew 70 percent per year over the same period,

At the same time, demand for capacity on the Europe-Asia route by way of Egypt grew 87 percent per year.

Carriers have kept up with increasing bandwidth demand by building new cables and upgrading existing systems, deploying a total of 54 Tbps of new capacity between 2007 and 2012, TeleGeography says. Over time, more of that capacity has been added on the routes connecting to emerging markets.

Between 1997 and 2002, the amount of new capacity deployed across the Atlantic was greater than the amount deployed on the trans-Pacific, US-Latin America, Intra-Asia, and Europe-Asia routes, combined.

Between 2002 and 2007, nearly half of all new capacity was deployed on the trans-Atlantic route.

Since 2007, each of the world’s major routes gaining between 10 Tbps and 12 Tbps.

Globally, emerging markets remain crucial for global telecom service provider growth. IDC predicts that emerging markets will contribute for 53 percent of 2012’s global information and communications technology growth.

Mobile will drive growth in the Asia-Pacific region, as elsewhere. But developing nations also will become the focus of broadband growth over the next decade or two, building on a substantial amount of growth since about 2005.