New telecom glut preparing ?

Do not forget that the telecom turmoil in 2000 was due to overcapacity, price collapse and easy money. The current situation is quite different. It took years to digest overcapacity and money is no more so easy. But....

In recent Telcoflash posts, I wondered of a so fast rising submarine systems market. So many systems simultaneously in preparation in trans-Pacific remind me the end of the 90s. The recent report from TeleGeography added confusion to my questions. Several systems are preparing: China-US Trans-Pacific Express, Asian America Gateway, Sydney-Hawaii, new Flag trans-Pacific submarine cables, Google' s trans-Pacific undersea cable, called "Unity,” and many existing systems upgrades. They would double lit trans-Pacific submarine cable capacity to 7.2 Tbit/s by the end of 2008. Even if the demand for more bandwidth is obvious, traffic in trans-Pacific only grew 41% in twelve months. So what for so many new systems? Put pressure on prices? Could be, as it is true that the lease price of a 10Gbit/s wavelength circuit across the Pacific is more than 10 times greater than across the Atlantic. Be caution, if the price pressure is too strong and too brutal, that will lead to the same story as in the end of the 90s.