Abstract
We are experiencing a tremendous resurgence in the deployment of new submarine cables worldwide. The drivers and sustainability of this unprecedented increase in bandwidth will be examined. The technology drivers will be detailed that have increased the submarine capacity per fiber 20X while the cost per unit bandwidth has decreased 40X. However, we are now approaching the Shannon limit which is now limiting the capacity per fiber that is achievable. This is driving submarine cable technology towards Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) and other innovations.