International internet capacity in Latin America has increased four-fold in the past five years, to reach 14.6Tbps in 2014. According to new data from TeleGeography’s Global Internet Geography research, 86% (12.6Tbps) of Latin America’s bandwidth is now connected to the US and Canada, making it the world’s highest-capacity inter-regional Internet route.
Growing 43% between 2013 and 2014, Latin America-US & Canada internet bandwidth has surpassed the 10.5Tbps in service on the Europe-US & Canada route and the 10.4Tbps on Asia-US & Canada, both of which have consistently been the highest-capacity inter-regional Internet routes since TeleGeography began tracking this statistic in 1999. Each of these three routes has more capacity in service than the Asia-Europe, Africa-Europe, Latin America-Europe, and Africa-Asia routes, combined.
While the shift may seem surprising, Latin America’s international Internet bandwidth is almost entirely connected to the US & Canada, while Asia and Europe have their inter-regional capacity spread among many routes — not to mention considerable levels of intra-regional capacity. For example, nearly 80% of Europe’s international Internet bandwidth is intra-regional, while the majority of Asia’s bandwidth is spread relatively evenly between the US & Canada, Europe, and intra-regionally.
‘In terms of total capacity, including private networks and internet bandwidth, the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific routes remain the largest,’ said TeleGeography analyst Cody Williams. ‘Private network capacity appears to have dampened the growth of internet capacity on those routes, allowing the Latin America-US & Canada route to catch up.’
TeleGeography’s Global Internet Geography is a comprehensive source of data and analysis about international internet capacity, traffic, service providers, ASN connectivity, and pricing. It provides profiles of 117 backbone operators, international Internet metrics for 75 countries, and detailed transit pricing data for 38 countries.
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