Submarine systems

Submarine systems

Every one knows that the submarine system market is cyclical, and for the past 50 years has experienced many turmoil periods. One of the longest and hardiest period was the 2000-2003 telecom bubble bust. Over capacity (in systems and number of channels), over hype in deregulation and Internet traffic growth, have led to harshly depress the market. Today, a reasonable optimism is back. Three new systems were launched in the past two years: FALCON ( a 15,000-km from Egypt to Hong Kong via India) from Flag Telecom; Polarnet (a 22,000-km system from the UK to Russia, China and the US); and now SEAMEWE4 (a 20,000-km system between France and Singapore via Suez). The system is built by Alcatel (portion France- India) and Fujitsu (portion India- Singapore) and has a capacity 32 times the initial capacity of the previous Sea-Me-We 3 system installed in 1998.