Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Friday, October 14, 2016

Carriers' Map 2016

Content owners go for cables and open new business models

Carriers' Map 2016  - Credit: © 2016 Convergencialatina
Carriers' Map 2016 - Credit: © 2016 Convergencialatina

The new edition of Convergencialatina’s Carriers Map includes 13 projects of new submarine cables to be deployed between 2016 and 2019. Companies already established in the wholesale capacity business do not believe said deployment to be necessary. They consider that with a demand growing by 40% per year, the existing infrastructure would reach a saturation level just in five to seven years.

The sector dynamics is then explained rather by the "who" than by the "why". The big players in the content area, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are here to stay: Google is involved in Faster undersea internet cable, which since July 2016 connects Japan with the United States. In Latin America it participates in Monet, Tannat and Junior future initiatives. Facebook and Microsoft will plot the laying of MAREA (Spanish for “TIDE”) transatlantic cable, between the United States and Spain, to start operations by the end of 2017.

These actors, so far outside the world of wholesale infrastructure, want to ensure large capabilities multiple roads to guarantee interconnectivity among data centers. They aim at quality of service for applications that can become viral in minutes, just as it happened with Pokémon Go, with unpredictable demand peaks, or facilitating the delivery of new services, such as video auto-play on Facebook.

The arrival of new players also brings changes in business models linked to the wholesale segment. Due to the complexity that can involve administering a submarine lying, the MAREA cable will be deployed and operated by Telxius, Telefónica unit devoted to management of infrastructures in a specialized way. And traditional wholesale companies do not rule out participating in these forms of association.

The Traffic Exchange Points (IXPs) map of the region increased from 56 operations in 2015 to 65 this year. Among the countries adding this type of infrastructure, Honduras decided to create a national IXP in Tegucigalpa this year. Other recent IXP is that of Belize, which already has four local ISPs from a total of nine and expects Google to install content caches.

 

 

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