FCC's First International Circuit Capacity Report Shows U.S. Undersea Cable Growth

U.S. undersea cable capacity grew by about 36 percent per year between 2007 and 2014 and is expected "to grow around 29 percent for 2014-2016," the FCC said Tuesday announcing the release of its first report on U.S. international circuit capacity. The top foreign landing points for U.S. undersea cables are Colombia, Japan, U.K., Panama, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico and Australia, said the FCC, which added the Atlantic region had a larger fraction of non-activated capacity than the Americas or Pacific regions did. The International Bureau report found new reporting requirements improved the commission's data collection. "Importantly, 94.6 percent of the total available capacity on all U.S. international submarine cables is now captured, compared to 7.1 percent collected under the previous reporting requirements," the commission said.