By Kenn Anthony Mendoza

International bandwidth is expected to grow at CAGR of 38 per cent between 2021 and 2028, implying demand will increase 10x over this period, according to market firm TeleGeography’s research.

The study highlights that there is a clear growth in international bandwidth connected to India.

“But what’s remarkable is that we don’t see sufficient capacity available to match it. In fact, if new cables are not added, available capacity would likely be exhausted well before the end of the decade,” says TeleGeography research director Alan Mauldin.

“But this will change very soon. We expect to see multiple new submarine cables serving the Indian market by 2025.”

India’s data centres are booming due to an influx of investments, its significant market potential, and relaxed policies and regulatory environment. The research found India has 11 cloud regions as of Q2 2022. Recently, Google launched a data centre in New Delhi in 2021 and both AWS and Microsoft Azure have plans to launch in Hyderabad soon.

Prices for international wavelength capacity from both India to Europe and Southeast Asia are currently more expensive than other major global routes, a trend that is likely to continue without regulatory improvements and the introduction of new supply, the study pointed out.

These higher prices are a by-product of concentrated cable ownership, control of cable landing stations, and fibre backhaul.

“We’ve seen prices to India decrease over time. But the recent pace of price erosion is much slower, especially for the Chennai-Singapore and Marseille-Mumbai routes,” comments TeleGeography senior research manager Brianna Boudreau.

“A contributing factor to this is capacity availability; throughout the pandemic supply chain issues contributed to delayed upgrades. Moving forward, there is an opportunity for newer, higher-fibre count submarine cables to meet current demand and a clear opportunity for providers to step up and serve future demand with elevated capabilities. Between now and 2025 at least six new subsea systems are slated to enter the market, with several more under discussion.”

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 16 June 2022.