2023 Update: Industry Practices and Future Capacity Requirements

In 2019, my colleague Alan Mauldin and I busted the myth that the submarine cable industry’s current practices would sustain our future capacity requirements. 

Four years later, we revisited the same question during our telecom mythbusting session at SubOptic 2023. Was the verdict the same?

This was our first time reevaluating a myth, and two big things have changed since our initial consensus.

In 2019, we were seeing very fast growth across the Atlantic. That’s changed a little bit—not a lot, but just enough to make a difference.

Secondly, SDM R&D was not as advanced in 2019 as it is today. Our current outlook for industry supply capabilities is a little rosier nowadays.

The Conclusion

Will the industry’s current practices be enough to accommodate future capacity requirements? It's difficult to say, because it depends on exponential growth and what happens with SDM. For now, though, we can change our verdict from busted to plausible.