Over 95% of international data and voice call traffic travels through nearly a million miles of underwater communication cables.
These cables carry government communications, financial transactions, email, video calls and streaming around the world.
The first commercial telecommunication subsea cable was used for telegraphs and was laid across the English Channel between Dover, England and Calais, France in 1850.
The technology then evolved to coaxial cables that carried telephone conversations, and most recently, fiber optics that ferry data and the internet as we know it.
“About ten years ago, we saw the advent of another big category, which is the webscale players and the likes of Meta , Google, Amazon, etc., who represent now probably 50% of the overall market,” said Paul Gabla, chief sales officer at Alcatel Submarine Networks.
Alcatel is the world’s largest subsea cable manufacturer and installer, according to industry trade magazine Submarine Telecoms Forum.
Demand for subsea cables is increasing as tech giants race to develop computation-intensive artificial intelligence models and connect their growing networks of data centers.
Investment into new subsea cable projects is expected to reach around $13 billion between 2025-2027, almost twice the amount that was invested between 2022 and 2024, according to telecommunications data provider firm TeleGeography.
