Physics / mechanism
Competitive landscape
Terrestrial dark fibre IRUs compete directly for enterprise and carrier connectivity within continents. Low-earth-orbit constellations (Starlink, Telesat Lightspeed) compete on latency-sensitive thin routes but remain capacity-constrained and cost-uncompetitive for bulk throughput. Integrated subsea cable + landing station ownership (hyperscaler consortia: Google, Meta, Microsoft) increasingly displaces traditional carrier-neutral operators. Coherent transceiver technology — the silicon photonics DSP/modulator stack — is where margin is captured, not in the glass.
Companies using
Connected ideas
Sources
Frontier (open questions)
- To be added.