By Sean Buckley, Fierce Telecom
Submarine cable capacity continues to rise, growing 36 percent a year between 2007 and 2014, says the FCC in its first “U.S. International Circuit Capacity Report.”
As a host of new submarine cable networks like Seaborn-1 and Hawaiian Telcom's SEA-US go into service over the next year, the FCC expects submarine cable capacity to grow around 29 percent between 2014 and 2016.
According to the report, the top eight foreign landing points (in descending order) for U.S. international submarine cables are Colombia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Panama, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and Australia.
Within the Americas, Atlantic, and Pacific regions, the Atlantic region has the largest fraction of non-activated capacity.
Today, about 60 submarine cables provide connectivity between the U.S. and Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as all connectivity between the U.S. and the rest of the world.
