About a decade ago, the submarine cable industry underwent a fundamental transformation. The arrival of webscale companies such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft has reshaped not just who owns the cables, but how they are built, where they are deployed and the purposes they serve.
These tech giants now represent more than 70 percent of the overall submarine cable market, and their share is growing. Undersea cables have been used for long-distance communication for more than 170 years — starting with early telegraph cables laid in the 1850s, with the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable established in 1866 — ushering in the modern era of instant global connection that now powers the internet. This shift from telecommunications carriers to content and cloud providers as dominant investors represents one of the most significant structural changes in the industry’s history.
Artificial intelligence is boosting the need for subsea infrastructure. For comp
