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The subsea cable market can always cling defiantly to the fact that it is responsible for carrying approximately 98% of the world’s internet traffic.

Like ancient relics from a bygone era, the first generation of subsea cable systems, now sit at the bottom of the world’s oceans slowly becoming buried in sediment and seaweed. A lucky few have become homes for small communities of fishes and crabs. Most, however, no longer have any purpose in life. And for them, the sea is a desperately sad and lonely place.

IDC reports that video conferencing revenue fell 2.6% in 2012. Telepresence revenues were down by 33% in the same period: they have been falling since 2010.

In today’s digital landscape, users expect content to be delivered at a rapid pace on a local and global scale. This creates a challenge for content delivery network providers to overcome any existing latency issues. Slow load times can cause users to instantly click away from a website’s content, resulting in a potential loss of revenue.

How curious, that after a three-year hiatus, the rumour mill surrounding Vodafone and Verizon is once again in overdrive. Recent reports trickling out of the US have suggested that Verizon is beauty-parading bankers and lawyers for what could eventually be the biggest acquisition in telecoms history.

Capacity has exclusively learnt details of a new cable system linking Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico to the US.

I was inspired by the impressive blog run by DiViNetworks, to investigate the developmental impact of telecoms. It’s a question that’s regularly asked in the industry: do economies grow when their telecoms infrastructure improves?

In a world with an estimated one trillion web pages, Vice President Al Gore, in his new book, The Future, suggests that “the global mind is changing our relationship to the world of information”. While it was H. G. Wells in 1937 who coined the term “World Brain;” in 2013, it is Vice President Al Gore who considers that the metaphor has now become a reality.

Some say the touted Verizon, AT&T, and Vodafone tie-up was a little too close to April fool’s day to be taken seriously. Certainly, it seemed far-fetched, but when the Financial Times reported earlier this week that US behemoths Verizon and AT&T were set to make a joint break buy acquisition of UK-based power group Vodafone, it did manage to open up not just one but two separate cans of worms.

Telefónica has partnered with service provider, OnMobile, for the delivery of its value added services on the telco’s Movistar Emocion content service.

There’s no doubt that data centres continue to be in demand. Major media-focused companies such as Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay and Netflix have all built private data center facilities to support the pending growth of their businesses as well as their compute platforms that house applications, video, images, historical data, and more.

At Capacity Latam 2013, a technology workshop was held in Sao Paulo by Capacity Conferences with sponsorship from NTT Communications and Cyan.