TeleGeography Explains the Internet

When submarine cables hit the mainstream media, it might be because something has gone wrong. Especially when faults lead to a bottleneck that slows down or, in rare cases, even stops internet traffic for some people.

Our guests today presented a paper at SubOptic 25 detailing their study on global submarine cable maintenance and recommendations for the industry.

Mike Constable, Principal at Infra-Analytics, and Alan Mauldin, Research Director here at TeleGeography, joined the pod to discuss their review of cable faults and the readiness of the industry to fix problems over the coming years.

🎧 Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

💻 TeleGeography Blog: https://blog.telegeography.com/

📊 Our Research: https://www2.telegeography.com/en/our-research 

Let's talk about keeping submarine cables secure.

Ferris Adi, Chief Information Security Officer at Trans Americas Fiber System (https://transamericasfiber.com/), joins to discuss specific threats to submarine cables and how best to build resiliency against them.

We also cover various regulatory and compliance issues that submarine cable operators face when landing in different countries, as well as geopolitical threats to cable systems.

🎧 Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

💻 TeleGeography Blog: https://blog.telegeography.com/

📊 Our Research: https://www2.telegeography.com/en/our-research 

We're kicking off a brand new mini-series all about *submarine cables.*

To start off the series, we couldn't think of a better guest than Senior Research Analyst Lane Burdette, an expert (and nerd) when it comes to cables. She and host Greg Bryan discuss the economics of submarine cables.

The conversation covers:

🎧 Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

💻 TeleGeography Blog: https://blog.telegeography.com/

📊 Our Research: https://www2.telegeography.com/en/our-research

Joining us today is FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington.

Commissioner Simington has served on the Commission since late 2020. He brings a diverse background to the role, including experience with the NTIA.

The Commissioner and Host Greg Bryan cover several key issues facing the FCC:

👉 Several issues surrounding spectrum allocation and use. We talk about how FWA and LEO fit in spectrum plans, CBRS, unlicensed spectrum, and, of course, a bit on spectrum auctions.

👉 BIL and broadband development and the role wireless can play in closing the digital divide.

👉 The FCC’s role in submarine cable development and the Commissioner's views on ensuring submarine cable security.

👉 The Cyber Trust Mark and the FCC’s role in securing the ever-expanding threat perimeter and the Commissioner's views on how to get OEMs invested in keeping users safe.

We welcome Michael Martin, formerly a global network and security architect at McKinsey. 

Michael has extensive experience in the enterprise network space. We get his take on the industry's state of implementation of network automation among enterprises.

Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

Dennis Thankachan, Co-Founder and CEO of Lightyear (https://lightyear.ai/), is back on the pod.

We discuss Lightyear's State of Connectivity Report (https://lightyear.ai/ebooks/lightyears-state-of-connectivity-2025), which dovetails with the topics we research here at TeleGeography. It may be a perfect companion to our State of the Network effort. (https://www2.telegeography.com/download-state-of-the-network)

Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

We haven't been getting enough fiber here at TeleGeography Explains the Internet, but we're about to change that. We welcome Todd Chapman, a veteran in fiber development. Todd walks us through the ins and outs of Layer 0 of the physical infrastructure underlying data transmission.

Podcast HQ: https://www2.telegeography.com/telegeography-explains-the-internet-podcast

Our next guest is Fahim Sabir, Director of Digital Solutions at Colt.

What is NaaS? Fahim joined us to clarify the often confusing world of Network as a Service (NaaS). We discuss Fahim's definition of NaaS and a breakdown of why it's important in the market. We also discuss the back end, examining what the carrier ecosystem needs to accomplish to make customer-facing NaaS a reality.

As the year ends, a few teammates joined us on the podcast to review the major telecom events of the past 12 months and chat about what we might anticipate in 2025. Some highlights 👇

⛓️‍💥 Analyst Lane Burdette joins the show to review some of the most headline-grabbing trends (https://blog.telegeography.com/what-to-know-about-submarine-cable-breaks) we saw in the submarine cable world.

☁️ While cables keep the continents connected, Principal Analyst Patrick Christian got on the mic to discuss one of the key reasons for that connectivity demand: cloud services.

📈 Of course, data centers underpin the cloud. For that conversation, we welcomed back Senior Manager Jon Hjembo after explaining our new Market Connectivity Score a few weeks ago (https://blog.telegeography.com/a-guide-to-calculating-the-worlds-next-interconnectivity-hub-according-to-you).

🐝 When it came to enterprise networks in 2024, it was hard to have a conversation that didn’t involve NaaS and security (https://blog.telegeography.com/when-networking-and-security-collide), specifically SASE. To talk about the trends surrounding the buzzwords, we had to call on Research Manager Brianna Boudreau.

🌎 So many of these conversations are underpinned by the transport network. To chat about the cost of sending bits around that global network, we were thrilled to welcome Research Director Rob Schult to tell us what was noteworthy in the world of telecom pricing in 2024.

Our latest guest is Vinay Prabhu, Director of Product Management at Graphiant. He joins us to discuss the intricacies of moving data around the globe. Vinay outlines why you should think about your data in motion and what Graphiant is doing to ensure its safe passage, particularly as AI becomes prevalent.