Month: June 2026
Hyperscalers Dominance of Subsea Cable Capacity to Increase in the AI Era
Hyperscalers (AWS, Google, Microsoft, Meta/FB) now dominate global subsea cable capacity. Their share of total international bandwidth has surged from negligible levels in 2010 to approximately 75% today. According to data from TeleGeography, hyperscalers are participating in over two-thirds of all planned submarine cable deployments, with Google alone anchoring eight new systems in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Despite this shift, traditional telecommunications operators remain critical to the subsea ecosystem.
Tier-1 telecom carriers provide the deep terrestrial reach and last-mile connectivity that both regional service providers and large content providers require to access edge markets. However, those network operators must increasingly architect their Wide Area Network (WAN) and long-haul transport infrastructure to integrate seamlessly with these massive hyperscale topologies.
Brian Washburn, Chief Analyst at Omdia’s Telco B2B Solutions Intelligence Service, notes that carriers face intensifying pressure to align their infrastructure with hyperscaler technical requirements. To achieve complete architectural control and establish fully isolated private networks, hyperscalers frequently seek to deploy proprietary optical transport equipment directly within carrier landing stations and co-location facilities. This shift toward self-contained infrastructure creates visibility challenges for the industry. Washburn noted Google’s extensive transpacific cable network as a primary example. Because this hyperscaler traffic is routed over fully private, dark fiber subsea segments, it remains entirely invisible to carrier networks and traditional traffic-modeling metrics, rendering these massive data volumes completely opaque.
TeleGeography’s interactive submarine cable map shows the majority of active and planned international submarine cable systems and their landing stations. Selecting a cable route on the map provides access to data about the cable, including the cable’s name, ready-for-service (RFS) date, length, owners, website, and landing points. Selecting a landing point provides a list of all submarine cables landing at that station.
From a macro perspective, the deployment of next-generation physical infrastructure is increasingly tied to the rollout of raw, rack-scale data center capacity to support emerging AI workloads. Matt Walker, Chief Analyst at MTN Consulting, indicates that while Tier-1 US operators anticipate near-term traffic growth from centralized AI training models, they maintain a cautious, wait-and-see outlook regarding long-term network demand and the broader monetization of distributed inference at the edge. “With agentic, the potential for rapid growth in unexpected parts of the network is real, and it’s not clear how to plan for this,” he said. Operators are worried they will be stuck with the network costs to support “these pricey new AI-enabled services,” he also noted. Telco’s lack of visibility becomes a problem here. Walker stated in his research report: “The industry is flying partially blind. No comprehensive public study of AI traffic volumes, patterns, or growth exists. Nokia, Ericsson, and a handful of others have made partial contributions, but hyperscalers don’t share traffic data. For an industry spending over $600 billion in capex this year, this is a significant planning liability.”
MTN also revealed that telco capex remained subdued in 4Q2025, rising just 0.2% YoY to $86.6B as operators prioritized capital discipline, AI-enabled efficiency, and monetization of prior 5G investments. On an annualized basis, capex declined 0.9% to $295.7B, remaining below the $300B threshold for a second consecutive year. The strongest annualized capex growth rates were recorded by Swisscom (40.7%), Etisalat (40.5%), Airtel (24.4%), SoftBank (10.5%), and Deutsche Telekom (10.3%). The steepest capex declines came from China Telecom (-13.6%), Telefonica (-12.3%), China Unicom (-11.5%), Reliance Jio (-10.8%), and China Mobile (-8.1%).
Regionally, the Americas strengthened its lead in 4Q2025, accounting for 36.5% of global telecom revenues and 36.3% of capex, supported by resilient performance from T-Mobile US, AT&T, and Verizon. Asia’s revenue share moderated to 35.6% and capex share fell to 32.4%. This is notable given that Chinese telcos have been ramping AI and data center spending, while overall capex continues to decline as cuts to radio/hardware spending post-5G more than offset these gains.
References:
https://www.lightreading.com/ai-machine-learning/ai-is-going-to-transform-our-networks
https://www.submarinecablemap.com/
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SK Telecom applies digital twins to SK Hynix semiconductor fabs using NVIDIA Omniverse libraries
SK Telecom (SKT) announced today that it has applied digital twins to SK Hynix semiconductor fabs [1.] using NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, optimizing the technology for complex, large-scale manufacturing environments. Digital twins recreate actual factories and equipment in virtual environments, enabling companies to simulate and verify the impact of process changes and equipment layout adjustments in advance. By enabling simulation of a wide range of scenarios in virtual environments, digital twins are gaining attention as a core physical AI technology that reduces trial and error while supporting data-driven decision-making. Last year, SKT completed a proof of concept (PoC) for applying digital twin technology to SK Hynix semiconductor fab. The company plans to proceed with commercialization in phases, aligning with SK Hynix’s roadmap to establish an “Autonomous Fab” by 2030.
Note 1. SK Hynix operates major semiconductor fabrication and packaging sites across South Korea and China, with new multibillion-dollar facilities under development in South Korea and the United States. While its core, multi-billion-dollar fabs are dedicated entirely to semiconductor memory production (DRAM, HBM, and NAND Flash), the company also operates a dedicated, separate pure-play foundry business that manufactures non-memory logic chips for external contract clients. : The main facilities in Icheon, Cheongju, and Yongin are specialized strictly for SK Hynix’s high-volume memory products like High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), standard DRAM, and NAND flash. These massive facilities do not accept contract manufacturing orders for logic chips from external companies.
The Contract Foundry Business (External Clients): SK Hynix operates a wholly-owned subsidiary called SK Hynix System IC. This arm acts as a dedicated foundry for fabless semiconductor clients.
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Using the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit, SKT has also developed “Agentic Digital Twin Modeling” technology, which automates and intelligently processes diverse data—such as equipment and spatial structures at manufacturing sites—for digital twin environments. This technology enhances the efficiency of data conversion, scene optimization, and performance improvement tasks that arise during the development and operation of digital twins in manufacturing environments.
A virtual factory implementation using SK Telecom’s digital twin platform. /Courtesy of SK Telecom
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SKT is enhancing its platform by integrating NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to improve the loading speed of large-scale Open USD-based 3D scenes, execution performance, and GPU and memory usage efficiency. Through this, the company plans to implement a stable and scalable digital twin environment even in complex manufacturing environments with massive data volumes, such as semiconductor fabs.
“Semiconductor fabs are among the most challenging manufacturing environments, combining massive amounts of 3D data, complex equipment structures, and the need for high-level optimization,” said Mike Geyer, head of industrial digital twins at NVIDIA. “SKT has demonstrated a high level of technical capability in applying and validating NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, as well as the NVIDIA Agent Toolkit in real-world industrial settings within this environment.”
“Through our collaboration with NVIDIA, we have validated that manufacturing digital twins can evolve beyond simple 3D visualization into a physical AI platform capable of understanding and optimizing large-scale 3D manufacturing data,” said Cho Ik-hwan, Head of Physical AI at SKT. “Going forward, SKT will continue to expand its role as a physical AI technology partner with NVIDIA across various industrial sectors, including semiconductors.”
As a network provider equipped with end-to-end AI solutions — from AI infrastructure and models to services — SK Telecom plans to expand and strengthen its business targeting the enterprise and public sectors.
References:
https://www.thelec.net/news/articleView.html?idxno=10930
