ANALYTICS
BY REBECCA SPENCE
W
elcome back to the latest addition of SubTel Forum’s annual Regional System issue. This month we are focusing on high-capacity cables and how they are influencing capacity demands around the globe. In this analytics article we will give a quick overview of capacity amounts stand to date as well as a quick look at the capacity of the next several years of planned systems. The data used for this article has been collected in the SubTel Forum Cable Database from the public domain.
THE NUMBERS AT PRESENT
In the last 5 years, the majority of new systems were implemented in AustralAsia, with a total of 36 percent of new systems accomplished in the region. Though close in percentage, EMEA has seen the second most significant increase with 24 percent of new systems, and the Americas received another 23 percent. (Figure 1) With a lull in 2019 and 2021, the Transpacific region has seen less overall activity but that has already changed for an upward trend with the addition of Southern Cross NEXT and multiple other Transpacific cables being implemented in 2022. With relation to the amount of kilometers that have been installed, the last five years saw an average of 54.5 thousand kilometers globally per year. 2017 saw the most cable put into the water with a little shy of 111 thousand kilometers, and 2018 with 78 thousand kilometers. The amount of cable laid decreased over 50
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SUBMARINE TELECOMS MAGAZINE
percent in 2019 to only 35 thousand kilometers but surprisingly began slowly rising again during the pandemic. In 2020 almost 44 thousand kilometers were installed and another 54 thousand were implemented in 2021. Historically this ebb and flow
is very typical in the submarine cable industry and is likely continue in the future. (Figure 2) While the number of kilometers installed has dropped during the past three years, Figure 1 indicates that the average number of new systems
