Forecasting future traffic demand is a difficult task, especially given the huge leaps in demand for megabit to gigabit to terabit systems. Such increases in transmission speed are where WDM technology comes into its own. Competition from Above The race to provide global broadband capacity does not belong exclusively to the submarine cable industry. Satellites have long been used as a transmission medium for both voice and data. After competing over the past 30 years or so, fibre optic cables and satellites are clearly complementing each other.
Satellites are ubiquitous and can reach any place and any user.
But greater capacity of submarine cables makes them more cost-effective. Satellite projects target the consumer market while submarine networks address the needs of carriers and service providers. In other words, satellites provide small lanes that lead to submarine networks' information superhighways. Given the potential of submarine cable networks to meet the increasing global demand for network capacity, their future may look bright. But the explosion in Internet usage and continued demand for bandwidth are joining to change the structure of the submarine cable industry.