SubCableWorld Releases Updated 2020 Market Study of the Subsea Fiber Optic Cable Market

Report cites unprecedented bandwidth demand as key driver for growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic

SubCableWorld (SCW), a market intelligence resource for the global submarine cable industry, today revealed details of an exclusive market report that forecasts continued growth for the submarine fiber optic cable industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

 According to the report, A Clean Bill of Health for the Submarine Fiber Optic Market in 2020, the industry shows no appreciable negative impact from the current global economic uncertainty, and 2020 will be the seventh consecutive year of dynamic growth for the industry, an unusually long period of consistency for a market known for its rapid boom and bust cycles.  

Projections suggest that 2020 will be the third-highest yearly demand (kilometers of cable going to contract) since the current boom period began in 2014. Only the record-breaking years of 2014 and 2018 saw higher totals and those will only exceed SubCableWorld’s 2020 forecast by 4% and 10%, respectively. The revised forecast for 2020 is 30% higher than the average demand over the previous six.

“We’ve held the belief that this growth period would continue unless the basic factors driving demand—exploding bandwidth demand, the need for greater redundancy, the push to bring the benefits of broadband to remote island markets—were throttled back in some way,” said John Manock, editor of SubCableWorld and author of the report.  

“We speculated that this could happen if there was some form global turmoil. The pandemic certainly fell into that category. There were some tentative signs of the market slowing early in the year as many nations lockdown and the global economy took a hit, but it rebounded quickly, and all indications are that 2020 will end with a year-on-year growth rate of 65%, more than double the 30% increase previously predicted back in 2019. If anything, the pandemic demonstrated how essential good connectivity is and highlighted the need for continued investment in the telecom infrastructure in general and in submarine cables in particular.”

Click here for more information about the report.