3 Reasons Why Submarine Networks Will Be Key for India Service Providers In 2018

By: Jatinder Khurana, Director of Sales in Asia Pacific, Ciena

Not many of us are aware that the global undersea cables network is the foundation for intercontinental Internet traffic. Every time you wire money abroad, or communicate with overseas customers, chances are extremely high that the data travels through a subsea cable.

Nearly 99% of transoceanic data traffic, be it Internet usage, phone calls or text messages, traverses undersea cables - and India’s telecom networks are no different. Submarine cables are crucial for the region because these cables support a connected population second only to China per Kleiner Perkins’ Internet Trends report. Hence, it is crucial that India service providers ensure their submarine cable investments remain intact, guarding from the usual wear and tear to major threats such as natural disasters and marine activities, such as fishing and anchors. A case of the latter occurred just last year when Cyclone Vardah caused significant damage and disrupted Internet connectivity for several days.  

Below are three key reasons that submarine networks will play a key role in India in 2018:

First - Bandwidth growth will continue:

Data consumption grew in 2017 due to drops in data tariffs and smartphone prices. In 2018, the expansion of 4G networks will support continued growth in data consumption. In fact, according to Ericsson’s Mobility Report from November 2017, mobile data traffic is set to grow by as much as 11 times, up from the current 1.3 exabytes per month to 14 exabytes by 2023. Growth in mobile access speeds will result in more data flowing between data centers, which is increasingly the major contributor to subsea bandwidth demands.

Thankfully, innovative technologies, such as adaptive modulation and new wet plant designs, are available to help service providers increase the capacity of submarine cables. Some of the existing cables can carry bandwidth of 200Gbps (or more) per wave using adaptive modulation, thus leading to better spectral efficiency and better monetization. Service providers can use innovative ways, such as merging submarine and terrestrial networks, to benefit from cost and operational advantages, while also greatly increasing network availability and resiliency.

Second - data center growth:

Increased adoption of the cloud by Indian enterprises is driving more data traffic between users, and even more between data centers. Further, Internet Content Providers (ICPs), like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google are setting up business in India to be closer to their customers. This was evidenced by Google who earlier this year, set up its first Cloud data center in Mumbai.

Additionally, two new Cables systems: AAE1 and BBG were launched in last two years. Even more subsea cables that connect intercontinental data centers will be required to meet the demands of always-connected India. Even if the content is cached locally, it will still require bandwidth for data center interconnect across countries. Additionally, to ensure reliability, data is backed up in geographically redundant data centers.

Third - 5G and the Connected Things Data Tsunami:

The world will soon move towards 5G, and India will not be far behind. The Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine communication will become the norm once 5G becomes a reality. Indian service providers have already started making an effort to prepare for the coming of 5G. In fact, Deloitte recently predicted that India is likely to have 1.9 billion IoT devices by 2020. Further, government-led initiatives, such as Digital India and the Smart Cities Mission, have left little doubt that IoT will flourish in India. Enhanced mobile bandwidth, specifically related to video-centric streaming, will dominate the expected bandwidth growth of future 5G networks.

Subsea cable networks were originally designed and built for voice and not data. With data demand showing no signs of slowing down, data center growth and 5G just around the corner, these cables will need to be upgraded and modernized to meet the anticipated data demand in 2018, and beyond.

We’ve listed just a few of the reasons that submarine networks will be critical to India in 2018. A robust and scalable submarine network will be crucial for operators to support the sheer amount of data expected by humans and machines. It is this data that will drive service providers to seek new levels of intelligence and automation that can be applied to subsea cables in the coming year.