Date: Wednesday 15 October | Location: Online Webinar | Time: 14:00 – 15:00 (UTC+1)

This presentation provides a data-driven analysis of the global submarine cable market, highlighting the increasing challenges to its resilience and potential threats to its operational continuity.

The submarine cable market is significantly influenced by hyperscalers, which now dominate the majority of international bandwidth and are allocating substantial resources to develop new, private systems. Investment is surging into the sector due to ever-increasing global bandwidth requirements. The largely uncertain impact of AI is poised to reshape the cable infrastructure. 

Ensuring continuity is paramount. Routine incidents such as fishing and anchoring remain the leading causes of faults, but geopolitical actions further heighten the risk of faults in critical chokepoints. The network faces threats from an aging infrastructure, with many cables nearing or exceeding their 25-year design life, and escalating risks in densely concentrated corridors. The long average time to repair and prolonged permitting delays in regions like Asia and the Middle East present additional challenges.

The webinar concludes with an evaluation of the strategies necessary for ensuring continuity, including substantial investment in new repair vessel capacity and the urgent prioritisation of diverse, resilient routing to safeguard the network against both operational failures and geopolitical pressures.

The webinar will cover:

• Submarine Cables: Users and Owners
• New Cable Demand Drivers
• Diversity and Resilience
• Protecting Cables
• Industry Challenges

Speaker

Alan Mauldin is a Research Director at TeleGeography. He manages the company’s infrastructure research group, focusing primarily on submarine cables, terrestrial networks, international Internet infrastructure, and bandwidth demand modelling. He also advises clients with due diligence analysis, feasibility studies, and business plan development for projects around the world. Alan frequently speaks about the global network industry at a wide range of conferences, including PTC, Submarine Networks World, and SubOptic.