Anyone following the submarine fiber optic cable market this spring has to be impressed by the level of activity.  In history of the NewsFeed, I can’t remember many stretches where there have been so many major announcements across such a broad range of topics.  Is it my imagination, or is the market experiencing a period of tremendous activity and optimism?

Maybe, but can this be quantified?  Well I gave it a shot.  I counted the number of major announcements (new projects and products, contracts, cable station and marine services activities, acquisitions, etc.) that I have gathered during the period from April 1 through May 20.  This period includes the SubOptic and International Telecoms Week events.  I compared the number of announcements made in 2016 to those during the same period (which did not have the triennial SubOptic event) in 2015.

The result was exactly a 33% increase (51 vs. 34) in major announcements in 2016.  Some of that may be attributable to SubOptic, but as I eliminated the “fluff” announcements and only included serious developments that you would expect to be reported regardless of whether there was a major event or not, I hope to have minimized SubOptic’s impact. 

Regardless of the impact, 51 major announcements in a seven-week period represents a huge amount of activity (about 1.5 announcements per business day).  This is definitely a healthy indicator for the industry.