Last month, a team of seasoned subsea engineering specialists from OSI attended the Pacific Telecommunications Conference, PTC’23, in Hawaii from January 14-19. PTC’s annual gathering is a strategic springboard for the global communications industry, providing all attendees with a four-day platform to focus on planning, networking, and discussing what lies ahead for the ICT industry.
This was the first full-fledged in-person PTC conference since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, back in 2020, so it was a welcome opportunity to network face-to-face—without the use of screens! Perry Wright, OSI’s President was in Honolulu this year, joined by Dave Willoughby, OSI’s Operations Director, and Tony Mosley, Business Development Director.
For many in the telecoms industry, PTC is a must-attend event and serves as an excellent way to kick-start the year. The format provides fertile ground for important client meetings—having everyone from the industry congregate for a week on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean gives attendees plenty of opportunity to sit down to discuss the year ahead, reviewing existing projects and prospecting new ones.
As tradition dictates, OSI’s week started off with a Pacific Island Telecommunications Association (PITA) meeting on Saturday. Most of our island partners in PITA are connected via submarine cables with many working on second and third cables to support route diversity and failover security. As always, funding for small islands is always difficult to justify but most of the existing subsea projects have been supported by Governments and Development Banks such as WorldBank and Asia Development Bank.
The cable projects have been transformational for many island nations with new use cases such as education – distance learning, telehealth, ecommerce and global trade to name a few. PTC does a great job of showcasing these new projects and the impacts they have on nation-states and the global internet community.
OSI’s very own, Tony Mosley, was the moderator again this year for the Sunday Submarine Cable session held in a packed Coral Ballroom. He and a select group of regional industry experts announced the new subsea cable projects underway around the globe. This year the Around the World Cable session, titled Here, There and Everywhere, was a big hit as always with the subsea community.
The development of new projects around the world is holding steady in spite of a potential global recession in the near future. Demand (bandwidth) continues to grow at 35% YoY because of Cloud, 4G LTE and 5G Mobility services, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Automation, and deeper reach into Internet user populations by pushing and providing broadband to everyone, the industry will continue to grow.
OSI conducted meetings with every EPC contractor in attendance, in addition to fiber optic cable suppliers, modular edge datacenter suppliers, and open cable equipment manufactures to establish and grow relationships and keep ourselves up to date with the latest developments in the industry. OSI is also working with some new industry entrants and prospects to support global subsea projects around the world. As always, it’s a pleasure spending time with old friends and colleagues getting updated on the latest industry highlights.
Thank you to all our meeting participants and industry colleagues for spending time during the Pacific Telecommunications Conference 2023, and thanks to the PTC Committee for staging such a successful event.
See you at PTC in 2024!
