International bandwidth is expected to grow at a compounded annual rate of 38% between 2021 and 2028 in India, a growth rate that implies international bandwidth demand will increase 10 times over this period.
Research by TeleGeography reveals India is experiencing an influx of investment in its data centres due to its significant market potential and relaxed policies and regulatory environment. India has 11 cloud regions as of Q2 2022. Google recently launched a region in Delhi in 2021 and both AWS and Microsoft Azure plan to launch regions in Hyderabad soon.
“Our research demonstrates a clear growth in international bandwidth connected to India. But what’s remarkable is that we don’t see sufficient capacity available to match it. In fact, if new cables are not added, available capacity would likely be exhausted well before the end of the decade,” says Alan Mauldin, Research Director at TeleGeography. “But this will change very soon. We expect to see multiple new submarine cables serving the Indian market by 2025.”
TeleGeography’s pricing research analyzes the impact this exponential growth will have on connectivity pricing in the region.
Prices for international wavelength capacity from both India to Europe and Southeast Asia are currently more expensive than other major global routes, a trend that is likely to continue without regulatory improvements and the introduction of new supply. These higher prices are a byproduct of concentrated cable ownership, control of cable landing stations, and fiber backhaul.
“We’ve seen prices to India decrease over time. But the recent pace of price erosion is much slower, especially for the Chennai-Singapore and Marseille-Mumbai routes,” said Brianna Boudreau, Senior Research Manager at TeleGeography. “A contributing factor to this is capacity availability; throughout the pandemic supply chain issues contributed to delayed upgrades. Moving forward, there is an opportunity for newer, higher-fiber count submarine cables to meet current demand and a clear opportunity for providers to step up and serve future demand with elevated capabilities. Between now and 2025 at least six new subsea systems are slated to enter the market, with several more under discussion.”
