Roderick's Top Ten Subsea Cable & Technology Forecasts for 2025/2026

1. The eternal East African capacity crunch with 100G pricing ranging from $35K to $110K leads to a new East African cable being announced in quarter two or three of this year. Thanks to Mark Tinka for this brave, but plausible prediction. Peace has proven to be a disappointment for East Africa with capacity owners focusing on selling IRUs into Kenya.

2. In 2026 a consortium decides to build a new West African cable as 2Africa is hopelessly inadequate in terms of footprint and capacity. Facebook is using 4 pairs for its own traffic leaving only 12 pairs for the rest of the market. But 4 pairs is not enough for Facebook's own long term needs.

3. Africa-1, SWM6, and Blue-Raman are all delayed into 2026 due to the threat of Houthi attacks.

4. The collapse of the AI speculative binge begins second half of 2025. AI disappoints because large language models are not capable of logical reasoning nor can they distinguish truth from falsehood. Lack of applications leads to too much money chasing too little revenue. Microsoft's CEO has already admitted in a recent podcast that LLMs have few practical applications. That is undoubtedly why he's decided not to exercise lease options on several data sites. He notes the acid test for AI is an uptick in global economic growth, which has yet not materialized. Yann LeCun, world renowned computer scientist and head of META AI research, notes that the ordinary house cat has more common sense than the most advanced AI models. Sometimes the truth hurts. Badly. 

5. The upcoming AI bust causes META to postpone or cancel its world spanning Waterworth cable project. The project's bizaree routing with the cable going from Brazil to South Africa and South Africa to India means its value depends almost entirely on AI striking gold. Perhaps the US/Brazil segment goes forward due to Facebook's lack of sufficient South American capacity. 

6. AI collapse leads to data center retrenchment beginning second half of 2025 with big projects being cancelled or abandoned due to lack of funding, limited power availability, and construction material and worker shortages.

7. PC-1 is decommissioned in 2025 or 2026 as it reaches the quarter century mark. 

8. Prices collapse between Lisbon, London, and their two African counterparts, Lagos, and South Africa due to the twin impact of Equiano and 2Africa capacity. 100Gs fall into the mid-to-upper teens. 

9. Google announces this year a new subsea cable connecting Los Angeles to Peru and Chile in order to tie up with the Humboldt cable between Chile and Australia.

10. Google, Amazon, and Facebook keep most of their Pacific subsea capacity as opposed to selling it to wholesale carriers resulting in high Layer 1 prices between the US and the Pacific Rim. Topaz is a good example with 10Gs around $7.5K and above and 100Gs in the upper 20s and low 30s.