Ciena: New Submarine Cables to Drive Data Centre Market Boom
The surge in AI and cloud advancements is fueling heightened demand for wave services, especially as hyperscale data centres are projected to experience significant growth through the end of 2025.
Ciena has published new research delving into the factors driving demand for wavelength services, offering the first in-depth assessment of this evolving market segment.
The study highlights the pivotal function of wave services in supporting the proliferation of interconnected data centres powered by AI, underscores the increasing need for low latency and data sovereignty in AI-driven workloads and explores the expansion of both terrestrial and essential submarine network infrastructure.
- From 2024 to 2029, growth in 400G circuits is set to soar, while 100G circuits will see a steady rise and 10G circuits will experience modest growth
It aims to emphasise how critical managed optical fibre network (MOFN) business models are to expand high-speed connectivity into new geographies and markets.
“As cloud providers scale data centre networks to address AI performance requirements, wave services must also evolve in terms of capacity, coverage, latency and route diversity,” says Mark Bieberich, Vice President of Portfolio Marketing at Ciena.
Hyperscaler growth fuels connectivity revolution
The US wave services circuits market expanded by nearly 8% in 2024 and is forecast to maintain steady growth through 2029, according to research from Vertical Systems Group.
The study highlights a rising adoption of wave services for cloud on-ramps, evidenced by the metro geographical focus (41%) and the predominance of retail customers (58%).
Additionally, the report projects that between 2024 and 2029, demand for 400G circuits will accelerate sharply, 100G circuits will continue to grow steadily and 10G circuits will see only modest gains.
Mark explains: “Demand for wave services is growing steadily worldwide, as data centre network expansion requires increasingly high-capacity interconnection among various types of network operators and end users.”
Wave services underpin high-capacity networks, serving as a critical enabler for connectivity to and between data centres.
Designed to deliver high bandwidth, protocol transparency and low latency, these services can function as standalone offerings or as the foundation for higher-layer services.
Leveraging Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, wave services facilitate enormous data-transmission capacity across a single fibre pair.
Demand for wave services is growing steadily worldwide, as data centre network expansion requires increasingly high-capacity interconnection
Currently, the market is led by 100G and 400G connections, though a significant number of 10G services remain in use — many of which are being systematically upgraded to 100G.
This trend is driven in part by the increasing demands placed on data centres, which require ever more sophisticated and robust interconnections to meet growing capacity and performance needs.
Submarine cable growth supports emerging data centres
The report also looks at the growth of submarine cables, highlighting that a record 161,100 kilometres of submarine cables are planned to become ready for service (RFS) in 2025 – surpassing the previous high of 121,000 kilometers becoming RFS back in 2001.
It highlights how this growth could influence the data centre market in the near future, which hopes to enable businesses to strategise and maintain a competitive edge within the industry.
As demand for connectivity has increased, subsea cables have had to evolve to transport significant amounts of data across open water in seconds.
According to the Tele Geography Submarine Cable (SMC) in 2024, there are 559 cable systems worldwide that transmit more data satellites at a lower cost. Now, these cables carry roughly 95% of intercontinental internet traffic.
“With infrastructure expanding rapidly and resource constraints increasingly shaping growth, anticipating demand has never been more important,” Mark adds. “Network operators providing wave services can seize this moment by proactively routing new submarine cables to emerging data centres and innovating to address these challenges. Differentiation through greater route diversity, low-latency connectivity, and compelling managed services is key to staying ahead.”
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