At  Carriers Map Day 2026, Pedro Carballeira García, head of International Business Development at Telconet Latam, highlighted the difficulties of finding providers with available capacity, given that capacity is currently fully booked. He explained that global hyperscalers “are taking over factories and network deployments.”

He also highlighted the longer timelines for building submarine cables, as obtaining permits and licenses is becoming increasingly complex. “Hyperscalers have that problem too, but for them, submarine cables are not a business. They are an input into their services,” he added. He linked the difficulties in financing these projects to the shortage of wholesale operators.

Along the same lines, Mauro Contardi, director of Strategy and Innovation at Trans Americas Fiber, explained that operators are facing higher costs due to a number of factors. First, the increase in oil prices resulting from the Strait of Hormuz crisis has affected the submarine cable market. In addition, the shortage of vessels and higher iron prices are also driving up project costs.

Against this backdrop, Matías Sánchez, commercial manager at Ufinet Chile, highlighted the need for companies to specialize and develop the expertise required to address the various challenges. “Our differentiator is what has helped us continue to grow,” he explained.

Contardi added that the market, which has grown exponentially in recent years, will drive the emergence of new neutral operators to meet demand. He highlighted the opportunity to bring traffic closer to end users and businesses. He said that as hyperscalers shift from being large customers to owning submarine cables, neutral operators such as Trans Americas Fiber help meet the remaining demand. “Google and the other hyperscalers are building infrastructure for their own platforms. But we remain the link between those platforms and the end user, and that role will never disappear,” he said.

Sánchez added that Ufinet’s approach is to provide 100% neutral infrastructure that meets the service standards of operators and hyperscalers. “That complements what they are doing, and we put ourselves at the service of connecting networks and providing neutral infrastructure that allows them to complement what they do not build themselves.” He added that its network is designed to interconnect with different submarine cables owned by different parties, as well as with various terrestrial networks that complement and support that infrastructure.