Panel 2 – Anticipating and Mitigating Risks Along the Global Subsea Network 

Thank you so much. I think you’ve hit on some key points there, and certainly coordination across government agencies can be a challenge. Even in the Australian government, we have a number of different agencies that engage on the issue of subsea cables, so you’re right, coordination can often be a challenge.

Also revenue. So thank you very much for that. Andy, if I can throw to you next.

According to ICPC statistics, and I think we saw those yesterday in the wonderful presentation that Kent gave, more than 80 % of submarine cable damage incidents are caused by fishing activities or anchoring, which is obviously the vast majority.

What more can be done by industry to further reduce these risks, and what role should governments play? Andy Palmer-Felgate: Thank you. Good morning.

I think it’s very interesting looking at the ICPC statistics because we’ve seen some really interesting trends. In particular… the very significant drop in the number of faults in northwest Europe and the Atlantic region, and conversely an increase in faults in Asia.

And that’s led to the global fault rate remaining fairly static. But if I can touch on the good news story first of all, and talk about what has happened in European waters, in particular the North Sea and the Irish Sea, which we used to be highly prone to faults from fishing.

What have they done to really improve the situation? So I think there’s four factors. Firstly, the new cables that have come along have been better engineered, better protected, better buried, and they’re able to generally get below the threat level.

So fishing will penetrate the first few centimetres down to maybe 50, 60 centimetres of the sediment layer. The new cables are generally buried to at least a metre, in some cases two metres, which gives much better protection. Secondly, we’ve seen some retirements recently, so several notable older generation cables that were highly prone to repeated fishing faults have in fact been taken out of service.

So that’s driven down the fault rate. Thirdly, AIS, using the tracking technology to detect when vessels may be coming towards cables and having an alerting system whereby the cable owner, either directly or via the Coast Guard, can get in touch with the master of the vessel and give them a warning.

And then thirdly, there’s more accountability. I think using the tracking technology, we’ve seen cable owners. We’ve seen them launch legal claims against vessel owners, and that does act certainly as a deterrent.

It drives better behavior. but what else can be done? I’m sure there’s more I think one important thing is the charting of cables when I look at nautical charts they do show cables but they’re not always 100 % accurate often there’s cables that were retired or decommissioned many moons ago that still appear other cables where the cable will be shown in part and then it will disappear from the charts so that’s obviously an area which could be improved I think more liaison both between the cable sector and the maritime sector so the masters of the vessels and also with governments to help them to appreciate what they’re dealing with and come up with bespoke solutions because these are very specific problems that affect different geographies very differently Thank you I think more accountability through legal measures, you’ll see in the working group two recommendations.

We recommend governments impose more accountability on the maritime sector, including the potential for criminal damage claims to proceed. And then that’s one thing, but it has to be backed up by enforcement, so more use of the Coast Guard, the maritime police to actually investigate these issues, and that then drives better behavior. I think in Asia there are some very specific issues relating to this sort of incompatibility between certain types of fishing activities.

There’s a lot of what’s called stone -up fishing that happens in Asia, which is very invasive in the seabed. it seems no matter how deeply you bury your cable, it can still be hit by these devices. So governments could perhaps introduce some spatial management zoning type of measures which would help to improve the situation there.

And then on the technology side, industry can keep trying to bury the cables deeper, but we have to appreciate it’s not always possible to see, but it isn’t always nice, soft sediment. There are areas of rock, there’s areas of slopes. So there’s a limit to what we can do when it comes to installation techniques and improvements.

Thank you so much, Andy. I think you’ve raised some really important points there. And, of course, coming from government, I take particular note of your suggestions for governments.

And I think, yeah, it can be a challenge getting governments to really appreciate what’s at stake here. But I think, interestingly, even though there’s a long history of these… damage being caused by fishing and anchoring it’s probably some of the more high -profile recent incidents and particularly major outages that have governments now I think paying more attention certainly I think that’s true for my government and yes I mean we and we do have criminal penalties in our legislation but enforcement that really can be a challenge so yes that’s something that we’re working on and I’m sure others are too Andy Palmer-Felgate: yeah there was a couple of things that I can’t read from my own terrible handwriting I think I was just going to mention very briefly and one of those is on the anchoring side I think you know having the port state inspections completed to actually look at these ships because it has been very notable that when anchoring issues have happened the ships have sometimes been investigated and they’re found to have in some cases hundreds of non -compliances with the port state inspection requirements so these are often very poorly maintained vessels and they’re often very poorly maintained vessels and they’re often very poorly maintained vessels and they’re often very poorly maintained vessels which go around the world they often get inspected they create a deficiency list and nothing ever gets done to rectify them so I think governments could do more to actually say at a certain point vessels are going to have to be held whilst these deficiencies are actually rectified and in particular with the storage of anchors they haven’t got the correct mechanical devices to secure those anchors on the bow of the vessel then why are they allowed to continue their trade so certainly a role for government there and then lastly just want to touch on cable protection corridors I think these are a really useful tool in some circumstances Australia has I think they’ve proved generally highly effective for the specific situation you’ve got there which is cities high population density in very specific locations requiring good protection and not many other options for diversity but it needs to be backed up by enforcement and proactive measures by the government.

Thank you, you’re absolutely right. Enforcement is a key part of it. Thank you for your points.

And now we’ll move on to Sigurd. So if I can ask you, what new technologies do you expect to emerge by 2026 that could help reduce the incidence of submarine cable damage?

Thank you, moderator Nadia. I think, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, just Andy and the collective industry talked a lot. I think that the capacity from submarine industry recently is not a big topic for the industry, but the protections and recovery for submarine cables will be very critical for the submarine’s efficiency to connect the world.

From my views about understanding, I had talking in the first summit in Nigeria. We’re talking that… very promising that in one or two years, the dust detections over the submarine cable will be feasible.

Today, I’m very happy to see that even at this slightly delay, according to my agenda, I think that the most powerful technology about dust detection over submarine cable will be very useful for submarine cable damage detections.

Traditional submarine cable damage detection is based on COTDR, which we need roughly 15 minutes or half an hour to calculate optical signals, and that will be very difficult to find or identify the shipping which might cause the cable break.

As we know, not every ship or vehicle has the air. Small fishing quits, especially for underdeveloped countries, they don’t equip air. As we know, not every ship or vehicle has the air.

As we know, not every ship or vehicle has the air. As we know, not every ship or vehicle has the air. So how to quickly or in time to catching optical signals which might cause the cable damage is very critical.

And the industry has, the scientific industry has noticed that, I think two or three years before, the dust technology will be the only one who can detect that in real time. Therefore, industry has two concerns. The first concern that not sensitive enough to contact the shipping activities.

The second concern is too sensitive to catch something that is not necessary. I think the second concern is too far away to discuss. I think currently industry has always the biggest target or biggest difficulty to utilize dust technology to identify the shipping.

above the cables and they might damage the cable. Our failed trial about real cables that proven we can detecting the ship activities in the nearby and our dust technology can transfer the repeater which means later not only the first segment of our systems we can cross the repeater we can detect roughly 20 to 30 segment about the cables behind behind the repeater.

The dust technology and the other benefit about the technology is that we don’t need to detect every part about the full cables that is the dotting different segments about after repeater we can be collected optical information they analyze about a huge data and come back from the dust technology could be offline and research could show that this mapping to identify to know that earthquake.

Right now we can detect grade four about 500 kilometers away and also the shipping above the cable. I think that the testing right now is roughly 100 to 200 meters, which is the most popular region across cable bridge. I’m not sure that we don’t testing about the cables above or deeper than 1 ,000 meters.

And the dust technology right now is trying to detect the up -to -date signals, but we need to improve the performance to address that. We can get more vehicles, especially ships, more boats, that they’re shipping over about 600. Thank you.

And plus AIS technology, if that is capable, we can identify it in one or two seconds, and then we can get very quick answers. The only technology right now, obstacles we put in real application, is that every one second we need to analyze one key data more, because that has manufactured huge data, so we need to calculate a lot.

Currently, we have cooperation with the university, and also that roughly it is offline data detections. We need 10 seconds to calculation. My target is that in one or two years, I hope that we can release some papers, hoping to be NASA, something like that, and also that we like to make some papers, and then we can get more data.

And also we prefer to develop some real facilities. using the database or calculation facilities in Cape Verde Station. The software, I think the prototype is fine.

So if that is very early, the people or customers want to use this technology, even if we are not so mature, I think right now, this year is feasible to be the commercial field trial, but to be a very perfect product like a COTDR, I think we need more time.

And please industry, keep more patience and give us more confidence. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. It’s fascinating to hear that update on what’s happening on the technological front. Obviously a critical issue for both protecting cables, but also for enforcement when things do happen.

Now if we move on to Eduardo, if I can ask you actually a similar question, what new technologies do you expect to emerge by 2026 that could help reduce the incidence of suffering cable damage?

Thank you very much for the introduction I think some of the things I will say will overlap with what was said before Let me start saying that there are no miracles here I mean, we continue developing technologies and I will mention a few of them that go in the right direction but, you know, as long as telecom cables share the seafloor with other industries with the fishing industry, with transportation, anchoring falls will happen So I think it’s…

I would like to take this opportunity to remind the importance of this advisory body in raising awareness and expediting permitting and bureaucracy related to fast and efficient repairs because we can develop a lot of technologies try to protect better the cables and do many other things but as long as, as I said all the time as long as we…

we like to eat fish cables will be broken But there are a few technologies recently developed that are worth mentioning more or less related to the protection of cables. Let me start with more on the optical domain, related to integration and technology. This may look less obvious from a protection and reliability perspective, but it’s still very important.

The subsidy industry has been put to the very limits in terms of technology. We are requested to provide, replace a very large amount of cables that were built in the beginning of the century, increasing tremendously the volume of kilometers of cable that we have to produce. And in parallel, we have been asked, and we have been multiplying by X factors the capacity that a cable can deliver.

While keeping the same format, I don’t have the sample that Kent brought yesterday, but a submarine cable is not much bigger than this, and this can transport now a petabit per second capacity. Now, we managed to do that at the same time as keeping production. So that has been one of the most important technology developments.

And you may wonder how that relates to protection. Well, it relates to protection in the sense that more cables are needed, more routes are needed, more diversity are needed, and those have to be built in a timely fashion. Similarly, in terms of integration, which is the biggest challenges that this industry is facing, how to make more while keeping smaller form factors.

Connectivity is an important aspect, and it’s also related to resilience of systems. Now, we can integrate a lot of optical switches in the branching unit. So, configurations and topologies that were not possible before, considering that now a fiber pair or a core pair is more or less the single capacity element nowadays, you can think of configurations.

You can think of configurations where you have a large capacity trunk in deep waters, well protected, naturally, by the water depth, and then add branching units in both edges and divert your routes. offering protection against cable faults while keeping your traffic live. This is enabled by new technologies where we are now able to integrate a lot of small components in critical space -constrained bodies like the ones in subsea cables.

And similarly, it’s terminal equipment, PFE, an open cable interface, all these boxes that we need to install to support the connection of transponders to these cables. These have also experienced very large integration efforts, and now these enable modular CLS, very compact, efficient cable landing stations that offer the possibility to open new areas for installation and enable diversity, which is essential for cable protection.

so that’s one aspect the second I think that has been discussed by Sigurd before is technologies related to surveillance and monitoring of subsea DAS is a technology that has been distributed acoustic sensing that has been widely introduced and deployed recently it has some trade -offs in terms of reach, precision speed and the length of the surveillance but it provides very high sensitivity but very recently there are very kind of spectacular experiments on monitoring the entire system similar to the OTDR aspect that was discussed before but very fast almost real -time OTDR where you can actually detect abrasion and long -term effects on the cable that could be caused in deep waters by landslides or instability on the seafloor and those technologies are enabled nowadays and they could be really a game changer in terms of protecting or predicting faults and make sure that customers prepare for that and last one is probably the most interesting one it’s called the monitoring of the state of the polarization of the light now this is very interesting because it comes virtually for free in every transponder that is installed in the global network every of these transponders has the ability to understand a little bit what happens to the light across the entire link and that could be done globally so that could really bring a lot of data to the table understanding potential risks especially long -term risks to submarine cables and the sharing and the processing with AI of this data could also provide benefits in terms of protecting selecting routes and understanding what’s going on in very deep waters for example where it’s very difficult to figure out or to predict the events Thank you and finally more specific protection technologies for submarine cables that have to do with armoring of course adding steel to cables recently the industry has developed new armoring technologies that enable bigger protection to cables that can be deployed and must be deployed in very deep waters this is especially necessary in some areas in Asia Pacific where fishing gears tend to damage the cables during installation and these technologies have proven to be very effective of course technologies related to increasing the burial depth HDD reach and these are very well known techniques that probably we’ll talk later and finally something that Andy knows very well none of these matter if we don’t know very well and very precisely the condition of the sea floor so very recently surveyed technologies unmanned vessels the the the the the the the making sure that survey can be globally and easily adopted by everybody and understanding and increasing the understanding of the seafloor, that will eventually bring us much better knowledge on how to better protect the cables.

So those are the three

Thank you so much, Eduardo. Thanks for outlining many of the key technologies that are either developed or under development, but also an important reminder of having an appropriate enabling environment, including permitting. And certainly when I was at the Pacific Telecoms Conference a couple of weeks ago, the issue of permits for repairs was held up as a key issue for industry and an obstacle to having timely repairs.

So good to have that reminder. Peter, moving on to you. With so much submarine cable damage caused by fishing activities, what proactive measures can cable owners take to reduce and prevent these risks?

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. Obviously, going last, I might touch on some of this.

things that have come on before. Well hopefully you’ll have done everything you can to avoid heavily fished areas before when you install the cable but failing that charting is really important. It was interesting yesterday when Kent mentioned the Cable Damage Committee in 1958, the predecessor to the ICPC.

In the very first meeting one of the top things on that agenda was charting of cables so that’s almost 70 years ago and they were talking about it then. Then charting is really important because if the other seabed users don’t know where the cable is then how can they avoid it? If you don’t tell them where it is then they can’t take measures to avoid it and that can also spill over into further things that can give them, if they do damage the cable, it will give them plausible deniability if you say, if you try to take any legal action against them then they can just say well I didn’t know where it was.

in Europe we have a system called KISORCA you can google that K I S – O R C A and that is a program set up by ESCA where we have charted all the cables in the North East Atlantic and we go out there and give it to the fishing industry we send out to them on their USB sticks and they can put those charts on their plotters so they have no excuse to say they don’t know where the cables are what you can also do is a lot of companies and ESCA as well we send out liaison visits to ports so it’s an outreach program really so we’ll have a liaison officer who will go out to the main fisher ports around Europe with a bag full of USB sticks and charts and physically put them in the hands of fishermen and then we send out the and then we send out the and then we send out the logistic reports What you also can do, obviously, as was mentioned before, is AIS monitoring.

And I think every cable owner now usually employs some kind of AIS monitoring tool. And now, as mentioned before, with distributed acoustic sensing, you can now identify vessels operating over your cables, even if you’ve got the AIS turned off. Unfortunately, that’s a big issue.

The AIS can be turned off, and so fishing boats go dark. And so you might have an AIS monitoring system, but you don’t know they’re there. I did an exercise a few years ago in the Irish Sea, where I did an AIS search of a 50 -square -kilometer grid on the Irish Sea, and there was no fishing boats in there whatsoever.

But then when I went on to another system that the government operates called VMS, which specifically looks after fishing boats, over the same period, there was actually 60 fishing boats in that area operating with the AIS turned off.

Another thing you can do with DAS as I think was mentioned before is you can fingerprint the actual fishing boats so you can identify the engine signature of a fishing boat so even if it turns off its AIS you can identify that boat.

So as a last resort obviously you can go after civil recovery so if a fishing boat does damage your cable you can actually go after them and claim damages for the cost of your repair. That has been done several times. I’ve personally had six cases against fishing vessels that we have successfully settled out of court and then last year we finally settled on a case in court in an Irish court against an Irish fishing boat which we won.

So that sets a legal precedent. So in the case the judge said… He said that it was incumbent on the fishing boat to only cable the duty of care.

and he should lift his gear when fishing over the cable. So we won that case. And then obviously, when all else fails, resilience, diversity.

We have the company I work for. I’m ESCA vice chair, but I also work for a company called Virgin Media too. We work out of the UK.

We have four paths across to Ireland and four paths across to Europe. So when all else fails, you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got redundancy. That’s it.

And if you could just quickly identify yourself too before you ask a question.

Yeah, so my name is Cynthia Maboom. I’m a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. I had a question for people from the ICBC on the panel.

So whoever’s happy to take my question. So last year, just piggybacking off of John’s question on the panel yesterday on the report that was released by the UK Parliament, which was a committee report. They invited several people from industry to give evidence.

But the report, and I’m referring specifically to pages 15, 16, and 17, it seems that industry perspectives were completely disregarded in favor of more national security -focused perspectives. So given the title of this panel, this panel is focused on… I wanted to ask ICPC how do they view anticipation and what do they anticipate?

What is the government anticipating in terms of future threats? And if we were to take anything away from that report, it seems that industry anticipations are very different from government anticipations. So I’m wondering if ESCA or ICPC have a strategy in place to align their perspectives with that of the government.

And if these do not get aligned, what would the consequences be? Thanks.

Who would like to start with that one?

I’ll take that.

Thanks, Peter.

I think Andy yesterday from the UK government mentioned that that report and that committee was coming at it from a very different angle. From where industry are coming from. They were looking at low probability but really high risk potential scenarios.

In the submission to that report, we asked the committee to consider… and looking at the fishing question and looking at what the government can do to reduce the amount of fishing incidents. So if you could remove that noise of all those faults, then you can focus on the other faults that are a bit more up the ordinary that need a bit more investigation.

The committee dismissed that, as you rightly say, because they were not looking at it from that angle. They were looking at it from a low probability, maybe even a hot scenario, a hot interaction scenario with a malign actor. So we’re diametrically opposed in that respect.

However, the UK government have set up a submarine cable industry working group that’s been in operation now for some time. We meet regularly three times a year. We do role -play scenarios, stress tests, our response to incidents.

So the UK government, the UK government is really, really very, very active in that regard. So I wouldn’t conflate that committee to what the government is actually doing. I hope that answers your question.

I think we have time for one more question. If there’s anybody out there with a burning question for the panel? Anybody?

No? No? Okay, then we’ll launch into the second round.

Oh, there is? I beg your pardon. Oh, yes.

Thank you. Thanks.

I have one question regarding the emerging technologies, especially the DAS. So, for instance, if you want to monitor a small cable for 50 kilometers, that’s in the order of a terabyte, and you need to process that data and host, who will carry those costs, or how viable is that to monitor a cable, especially from the cost perspective?

Is it good? Would you like to say? Okay, thank you.

Thank you. To be honest, in the first summit, we were also discussing about, whether, uh, how to balance the financial difficulties and technical advantage. That is quite expensive, to be honest.

I think that for a small cable like 50 kilometers, OTDR is, I think if the cooperation is good enough with the AIS and OTDR, not COTDR, OTDR, I think that it could be substantial for the real -time damage, but it will not be possible to detect the cable, the shipping over the cables.

Typically, this technology for COTDR using in submarine technology is for long systems, for trans -repeater, which is 10 ,000. 10 ,000 kilometers or 7 ,000 kilometers for short systems. less than 50 kilos, I think that OTDR could support for the, it depends about the fiber, I think 100 kilometers or 150 kilometers for two directions could detect in real time about attenuation of fiber and then the cables.

So if the cable has been break, I think that you get, not automatically, or you can ask somebody to develop automatic software switch and hardware connections for opticals, then you can also in very short times, you can make detections and in several seconds you can get the data.

But to be honest, the short systems, if that is the, I think that the technology is for the, not every functionality. For this case, I prefer that you make investigations about assembling cable rows and also the coverings. We will discuss the next sections about ideas that how to make cable coverings and how to make cable burries to reduce the damage.

I think that is the only direction. For short systems, we have enough margins to plan better rules and planning some better cable coverage. If you ask me my suggestion, I think that you’re asking the industry people to develop OTDR technology in both directions.

You can get quick actions about cable damage. But I know that under your countries, all the vessels, especially fishing boats, they don’t. They don’t equip AIS.

So how to, after you get the… So quick information about locations or cable break caused by the shipping, you need to find some ways locally how to quickly get the identity of who made the cable break. That is my answer to you.

Well, thank you, Bill. Hopefully, it will be time for some more questions. Oh, I beg your pardon.

The question was about the large amount of data that DAS generates. That’s a part of the cost. I think DAS has two parts.

One is the hardware, per se, which is relatively simple optical devices. It’s just they are not produced in very large volume. That drives the cost.

But the application in terms of what do you need DAS for, what do you want to detect, if it’s signature of propellers, things like that, those things are done at the edge. And there are companies already providing services that they can monitor that. And I don’t think data flow.

Data management, it’s a problem. Majority of the processing can be done on site. So it’s a matter of the intelligence they use to make sense of the data and fundamentally to…

have as less false alarms as possible, which is one of the challenges for DAS when you want to identify threats. Sorry.

No, no problem. Thank you. I just couldn’t see through.

All right, next round of questions. So, Nonkqubela, in your opinion, how can international organisations support governments and the private sector in addressing the challenges faced by the submarine cable repair sector? Nonkqubela Thathakahle Jordan-Dyani: Thank you very much.

I suppose there’s a couple of issues, and on the onset as government, we do appreciate the collaborative partnership, and I must also indicate the investment that has been taken by the private sector as well as the support from the international organisations.

So there are a couple of issues, and I think marries well with the declaration that we’ve just… issued now. The issue with regards to building regulatory as well as legal frameworks or some form of guidelines.

So as I said that there’s need to ensure a harmonized approach you know when we hear about the rapid response levels the level of cooperation that is in other jurisdictions and other regions that’s something that we would like to ensure it’s common across the continent as well or globally.

And I think the issue of enhancing mapping information sharing as well as then the issues of transparency as well bringing on board obviously the relevant partners for that as well. And then obviously boosting regional cooperation as well as capacity building I’m happy to hear that the IPC is going to be having a workshop or a meeting next year I think in Nairobi. Thank you.

making an appeal to then say please invite governments as well for that. And I think the issue of continuous capacity building, raising awareness as well is going to be quite key. I’m keen to also then say perhaps we also need, as part of then this capacity building, extend that not just in terms of your telcos, your regulators, but then to the other sectors as well.

You’ve got more and more people very active in the oceans economy. And for them it’s obviously more of an economic drive, but not understanding the risk. So it has to be spread much, much wider than, you know, just in terms of the current focus, which would be then the telcos and maybe some key maritime players.

And then the issue of promoting safety, security as well as environmental standards, cannot be undone. are estimated. And I think we appreciate obviously the role that is being played by some of the international organizations.

As I said, working with partners as well across the ecosystem is going to be very key. The issue of the environmental best practice, we’ve talked about the issue that the cable life and then obviously when it comes to the end of life or the issues of maintenance is also going to be very key as well.

And I don’t think there’s much active focus and intent drive in terms of recreating that. And also then to just make sure that there’s the responsibility that is being carried by a number of players. And then obviously fostering innovation as well as the future proofing is probably going to be very key.

I was hearing about the issues with regards to the modern technologies and then I think what is also probably going to be very key, and I think the role with the international organization is partly the issue, whether you call it, whether it’s going to be redundancy or diversity, bringing on board a number of other players.

So when we sit here and we talk about the purpose and the intent and goal of the submarine cable, it’s about universal connectivity. So if you want to achieve that, you’ve got to also look at other complementary platforms as well as connectivity infrastructure. So you’ve got your LEOs, you’ve got your data centers, et cetera.

And when we do do the mapping, when we do the planning, it’s very important that we make it all inclusive.

Thank you. You made some great points there. And I mean, for Australia in particular, we’re very fortunate.

We’re very fortunate. MS. Thank you.

MS. Thank you. MS.

with our Pacific neighbours on things like capacity development and so forth. So, yes, I think regional cooperation and collaboration is a really good point. But you’ve made many others as well, so thank you.

Andy, moving on to you. So the number of cable damage incidents, and again, I think we saw this in the presentation yesterday, the number of cable damage incidents globally has remained relatively stable over the past 15 years, and yet we’ve seen a massive increase in the number of kilometres of cables laid.

And at the same time, repair timeframes have increased considerably. So why is that happening? Andy Palmer-Felgate: Well, I’ll start off by talking about the global model for cable repairs.

So we have a model, as Ken described yesterday, where the assets are shared across multiple systems. They’re in these zone and private agreements. The ships are pre -positioned at base ports.

Base ports around the world. And historically, those base ports have been either located where… there’s a high number of cable faults such as in europe or parts of asia or in areas that are very remote geographically such as south africa um north west canada um we’ve got vessel in in the south pacific for example now there’s been a big shift as i described before in the number of faults so um the fault numbers outside of asia dropped dramatically in asia they’ve risen but we can’t just move all of the cable ships to asia um to serve those those increasing cuts and that’s for a few reasons firstly um the system is not particularly agile in that you know these agreements span for a number of years and the customers are committed and it’s quite difficult to um just move ships around the world to do that um there’s a lack of willingness i think in asia um to fund additional ships there’s a shortage of cable ships and you know, we need to keep the coverage.

So if you’ve moved all the vessels from one part of the world, it’s just going to create a vulnerability elsewhere. The second important thing is that there’s 600 submarine cables worldwide, and 50 % of the global repair capacity every year is consumed by only a handful of those cables. So if you were to take away that handful of cables that are the problem cables, we would see a dramatic change in the number of repairs, and therefore the capacity available to respond to those repairs, which would drive the fault numbers down.

As it is described, we’ve seen some of the problem cables in the Europe region retired recently. We don’t know for sure in Asia whether these new cables are going to be more reliable, when these old problem cables are going to go out of service. There’s a lot of uncertainty.

There’s a lot of uncertainty. I think that the second point is really on government and how well -prepared governments are to enable timely repair of cables. We do see perhaps an increase in protectionist policies ranging from cabotage requirements, vessel importation, requirement to put up a bond, security -related permitting of the personnel and the vessels.

And that all has a compound effect where if the vessels are queuing already and then they’re dealing with this on top, it does result in serious backlogs. So there’s a lot that governments can do, as discussed in the panel yesterday, to allow pre -authorisation of vessels to respond. I think the next point, which is perhaps emerging, is…

owners are perhaps becoming a bit more strategic in how they schedule repairs on the technology side we do have this great ability to keep the traffic running when there’s an electrical fault on the cable known as a shunt fault and i think cable owners are increasingly taking advantage of that technology to schedule repairs for improved weather windows so what why go out in the middle of winter when the vessel will just be on weather downtime when you could wait a few months and schedule that repair in the summer months we’re seeing customers become more strategic about that but then they’re also in essence you know driving around with the the warning light on the dashboard when perhaps they shouldn’t be so there’s a bit of a caution there that you know cable owners should not become complacent and you know i think that there’s a

Thanks, Andy. That’s a fascinating statistic. 50 % of repair capacity is taken up by only a handful of cables.

I have a question. Is it because they’re so old and decrepit or they’re just in very high -risk areas or both? Andy Palmer-Felgate: They’re in very, very high -risk areas.

Also, it’s an issue where every time you repair a cable, you can never bury it as deep as you could initially. So they’re having to conduct a repair, lay down what’s called a final bite, which is a loop of cable with the splice point in it. And that bite is quite difficult to bury, very difficult to drive remotely operating.

There’s a separated vehicle around that bite to bring it down into the sediment. and that then creates a weak point that gets hit again. So often, you know, what starts off as a bad job then becomes even worse over time.

Thank you. That’s incredibly interesting. And also, yes, a timely reminder about the importance of the government regulatory framework, things like permitting.

I mean, that’s something that, again, we’ve certainly heard very clearly from industry, the importance of that. And again, quick plug for Australia, we don’t require permits for repairs, just notification. Notification?

Andy Palmer-Felgate: I think it also illustrates the criticality of getting it right first time when it comes to cable protection. You only really get one shot at it, and that’s the day it’s put in the water. If, you know, for whatever reason, the cable is not well protected at day one, then you’re going to have a horror story potentially going forward.

Well, that’s right. Prevention is better than cure. So start with the protection.

Excellent point. Thank you. Sio, coming back to you.

So cable burial can be challenging in areas with strong currents that can obviously expose cables over time. Beyond burying cables, what cable design or protection measures should be adopted to reduce the risk of accidents in shallow waters where, of course, most of the incidents occur?

Thank you, Nadia. You give me very mature and very open issues. To be honest, it’s very difficult to answer.

And from our engineering views, that the cable protection or cable design itself, we don’t have too much modules to do because typically the submarine power cable is far more strong and bigger than submarine optical cables.

But even the submarine power cables, they don’t have issues of similar conditions. And also the experience from submarine power cables is that they’re buried. The only thing is covering, covering by the broken stones and also the parallel concrete.

The questions about that is very expensive, especially even more expensive for some of the power cables. So for some of the optical cables, it’s too expensive. So engineering speaking, enhance the mechanical features to optical fiber cables.

I don’t think that they can cover for that. So from our understanding about that, from engineering, not only technology itself, we have three points that we think the principle works. The first one is that we make something accessible.

As you know, the geological technology is quite fixed for submarine locations and also the currency analyze and then the activities about shipping and vessels. tetrahedral regimes and also identify the high risk zones and also we make coverings in short distance, for example one kilo or two kilos and also that we make more road design to avoid the coverings is feasible because our maintenance in the East China Sea, Yellow Sea, in the past five years, I think that’s the most frequently broken zones for submarine power and optical cables evidence shows that repairs slowly decrease because we have made a similar idea to do that, to make coverings in high risk zones not every zone that is one thing, I think also that we made selections about the current because the fishing is also fixed the fishing zone is almost fixed.

We don’t think that every year they change a lot. And also we need to communicate or educate the fishing guys. I think that even in China, for the other countries, the fishing guys they don’t have well educated.

So you need to tell them that the optical cables you benefit nothing but they lost a lot. And also the legals and also the educations. Sometimes the China Telecom has good practice about that.

They educate the fishing guys that if you are anchoring the cables, take pictures and cut the anchoring and go back, I will pay you two anchors. I think the best practice about that. But not even with the educations, not every fishing guys will follow because they say, I don’t mind.

I’m hurry. So I think that is the industry best practice about that. From the design levels, not the technical design, but I think engineering design, I think two ideas from my mind to see that one is we select the better road, and also in the better roads, we locate more sampling optical cable.

Typically, the ICPC or industry is saying that sampling optical cables leverage 200 meters. So if that is a good path, is it possible we shadow down the difference, or that we can share some pipelines for that, like Singapore? That is the most challenging point, that they don’t have too much good directions.

And the second one is that for some regions that is not… easy for that so we prefer thinking that is that possible to find a place outside the cable stations and has not worrying about the currencies on fishing and shipping then we have islands and then we setting we call that submarine data connections for that and from a long distance submarine cable will connect to this port or we can use optical switch functionality in the cable stations that we can switch from every fiber pair and at this point to the cable station that is very risky about currency fishing in all cities is that possible that we have high fiber con technology right now even in the future for full fiber con systems then we can develop two or three cables in parallel to connect for that because for a deep sea I don’t think that is frequently damaged causing by fissures or anklings typically by earthquakes let’s say very difficult to predict or covering we can fix only thing we can fix as soon as possible but for narrow zones I think I don’t see the industry has real this practice but I think it might possible especially for too much damage for that normal practice it doesn’t work so the only thing we think that we find a good place isolated from risky zones and all the long distance connection this point and for this point we parallel to build some cables that if one cable is split okay we switch one minute recovery?

That is my thought about this very tough, open and difficult question. Thank you.

Well thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. It’s obviously a very challenging environment. I mean as Andy said, that’s where the incidents are rising in Asia and it’s not surprising when you’ve got so much congestion of cables but then also so much different uses of the sea, whether it’s fishing, shipping and so on.

So it’s obviously quite a challenging environment. So looking to you to come up with those innovations to protect cables better in the future. So Eduardo, coming back to you, armoured cables are more expensive but often necessary when landing in rocky areas to prevent abrasion related failures.

Is that a common practice in the submarine cable industry and how are the cost considerations balanced against the risks?

That is going to be there for 25 years seems like a no -brainer to spend money on armoring if that will prevent abrasion faults. But there are other ways to protect, of course, and adding armoring, double armored or rock armoring cables or articulated piping or concrete protections, which are extremely strong. They are also vulnerable to forces in the seafloor.

So I think, as I mentioned before, a very good exercise of survey and having experts with a lot of experience analyzing the survey results will give you the best answer on what is the best protection technique, articulated pipes, HDD, which is likely the most robust, or adding less or more armoring.

So that would be the choices we have.

Thank you very much. And, yeah, good reminder that they are, despite their size, quite resilient themselves. I was absolutely stunned the first time I saw a piece of cable how it’s about a garden hose.

It’s extraordinary. So remarkable technology. Peter, coming back to you, cable protection is considered in both the planning, design and implementation stages of subsea cable systems.

Apart from those stages, where do you think the most progress can be made to make meaningful reductions in risks to subsea cables?

Yeah, thank you. I would say do the work up front. You know what I mean?

Put the effort in. Route the cable correctly. As was mentioned yesterday, the vast majority of faults are on the continental shelf.

Because although the sea might look like a benign area, it’s not. It’s very, very busy on the continental shelf. So you’ve got to route over existing infrastructure.

You’ve got wind. infrastructure, you’ve got aggregate extraction, you’ve got oil and gas you’ve got marine protected areas that you can’t go through anymore so you’ve got to route it correctly and there’s lots of data out there you can get, there’s lots of fishing data you can get, so you want to avoid highly fished areas, shipping data, we know where the shipping lanes are, so you need to avoid them so if you route it correctly, you’ll save yourself a lot of pain and if you look at a map of cable routes today, you’ll notice that they generally all seem to go in the same way that they have done for hundreds of years even the old telegraph cables went the same way as the new cables go but now, with the need for diversity with the need for extra capacity cable operators now are having to go routes that they wouldn’t ordinarily have taken, to avoid places to avoid the Red Sea for example so survey data there is essential to get that right.

If you don’t have the right survey data, harder ground, you can’t bury in it. Then you’ve got to look at the issues that Eduardo has just been talking about. You’ve got to look at extra more costly ways to protect your cable.

And then installation. As I say, you’ve got to make sure you install it correctly. You’ve got to bury it.

I think two things you take away from that is root it correctly and bury it correctly. And that will solve 90 % of your problems.

Well, thank you. That’s a very powerful statement right there. Now, I think I’m conscious of the time.

We did start a little bit late, however, so I hope people will indulge us a little bit longer. We can now take a couple more questions if there are any other questions from the floor. Please.

Microphone. Thank you.

My name is Estan from Tanzania. Eduardo talked about integration. So I was looking for a little more light on how the integration between the submarine cable network and the terrestrial backbones, how can that integration help in early detection of faults and also how can it help during the faults, how can it help in faster traffic rerouting?

Also, the cable that you had, is it armored cable? Can I have that sample? Thank you.

To the question of integration well the kind of integration I was referring was more on the component level making things smaller not necessarily as I think you referred to like integrating subsea connections with terrestrial which I think it’s a problem that has been solved I mean since 10 or 15 years ago subsea networks are not really independent anymore they are built in an integrated way I mean transponders are the same for terrestrial and for subsea so either in many fibers from the subsea land directly to data centers nowadays or nearby so this is where you can do your switching several layers it could be on the physical layer as Sigurd mentioned before for diversity of fiber pairs or it can be in upper layers and it can be in the subsea layers and it can be in the subsea so yes that’s the way to ensure that you have your paths protected and your second question was about a cable I couldn’t get that one this is not a cable it’s a pointer this is still a laser it’s the closest thing you can get the sample was I asked Kent but he didn’t bring it but actually the diameter is very similar so I put this as an example but this is not an example, sorry but it has a laser inside so it’s close enough 70mm is a diagram right

Hello good morning. I am working on the joint transport smart cable and I wonder if you I mean the board, the table how can you approach to mitigate the height and multiple risk, which is the case that you are sitting, is based on environmental issues, technological issues, administrative issues, political issues, even sabotage issues, which is not very polite to say it.

What is your impression about the future of mitigating in a very advanced society about communication? Do you think it’s a good idea? Do you think it’s a good idea, multi -assessment of multi -risk approach instead of going one by one?

Or is this completely nonsense? Or what is your opinion in general? Thank you.

Okay, thank you. I’ll try to answer your questions. This is a very hot topic in the industry for smart tables.

And I have met Bruce, I think it was roughly 10 years before, that we had discussed about. And a lot for smart tables, system, how to develop and deploy. I think that the idea from…

from my side that 10 years before still exists from right now but some technology has improved to be honest and the only two ways to develop a smart cables I think traditionally is one is that and like I assume and you see has the developer electronic and optical integrated facilities in the voters and possible like like someone capable in Europe that we have integrated smart cable facility for that the only thing between for this solution is that if they fail and but the submarine technologies that someone optical telecom business is very keen about repair and in a time continuity so I don’t think that submarine telecom business will repair and in a time continuity so I don’t think that submarine telecom repair this facilities because it’s filler the cost is very high for a business break and that is the most difficulties for the electronic and optical smart cable system methodologies from a technical side I don’t think that is obstacles if you make investment and also that we can develop less facilities and the only thing is that reliability for scientific observations functionality should we need to develop 25 years reliability it’s very expensive but how to balance if that is 10 years or 15 years if that is cable break what is the issue if let’s figure out about this facility should we replace it in time or just leave it alone that is the most important thing for scientists need to understand.

or that the second one I think my personally talking with Bruce that it is possible more optical more optical means that optical is as we know that optical electronic is not in fact about submarine telecom business and so in some cases we make some observation facilities in the submarine cable if that is not very seriously relevant about telecom business I think that some industries will be happy or will be accessible to innovate with observations for smart cables I think that Medusa is the only one in the world right now has primarily support telecom business and smart cables I’m looking to see that what is the we cannot say purely the telecoms to give more support for scientist observations I think every country’s telecoms operators they have their difficulties let’s say to answer your questions I think that is telecoms is difficult to give support for electronic solutions because that is very dangerous for them to support that if the business fail and for articles the difficulty is technologies and just like that I think that the industry has developed more than 5 to 10 years in very beginning about that but right now we’ve seen the promise and the possibilities to be real application in 1 or 2 years or 3 years but for smart cable systems long systems I think that we need more time but good things is that I think the AI technology and also possibly in the quantum calculation is further I personally think that 10 years will be a good time slot to develop purely optical or many optical solutions for smart cable can support scientists to make observations for the world for the global earth or for the space that is my immature answer to you 60 % agree with the 10 years comments I’m talking with Bruce.

Thank you for your questions I see one more just one more

hello good morning my name is Simon Hibbert I spent my career installing and maintaining submarine cables particularly telecom cables um I’ve been working I just wanted to add a couple of observations, really.

Peter spoke about getting it right first time, and that’s bang on. That starts with the quality of the route survey. If you don’t have a good survey, you’re not going to be able to lay your cables in the right place and route them correctly.

So I would caution any investor in a submarine cable to make sure that you go to a reputable survey company for your survey information, because as we all know, rubbish in, rubbish out. I would also like to touch on something that hasn’t been spoken about. It’s very easy to lay cable badly.

The training and the qualifications and the experience of the people on board the ships that are installed on board the ships, installing the cables and maintaining the cables should not be underestimated.

this is not something you can necessarily learn from a book you can read cable working practices but you will not learn how to repair a cable without going out and gaining experience from the talented people who have done that before you and are perhaps on the ship with you installation practices are very very important knowing the speed to go the amount of slack to put in the cable how to use the bespoke slack tools things like this are very important so I just wanted to add really to the fact that getting the right people offshore is just as important as having the right assets

Yes thank you very much. I think we heard in the panel yesterday a couple of the panellists made the point that having the crew with the appropriate expertise is a key part of the equation and and obviously a bit tricky too when you’ve got repair sometimes with significant periods of downtime, but you don’t want to have them with too much downtime because people then lose their skills.

But thank you. Yes, that’s a great point. Did anybody want to make any other last remarks in response to that or no?

Andy, please. Andy Palmer-Felgate: Just to respond, I think it’s absolutely critical that we do address the ageing workforce and the fact that a career at sea is not a very attractive career these days to a lot of people.

I think with the advent of digital technologies, often many ships, even today, have very, very poor internet connections despite the advent of Starlink. People don’t want to feel isolated working offshore. So trying to find the right people to invest in the training and try to pass on a lot of this knowledge, which can only really be passed on by the people who are involved in the industry, verbally before the current generation go into retirement, I think that’s a really critical thing that the industry…

focuses on and I’m aware that Suboptic are pursuing an initiative at the moment to try to address this so hopefully we’ll see some news come out from the industry fairly shortly.

Excellent, thank you. Thank you all for your patience and thank you for your very interesting questions. As we wrap up I’m going to ask each panellist to answer in 30 seconds or less.

Yes, looking forward what do you consider to be the biggest challenge to minimising damage to subsea cables globally? 30 seconds or less. 30 seconds.

Nonkqubela Thathakahle Jordan-Dyani: I’m just going to say what Simon said. Simon says we must do the right planning, right investment, the right minds as well as the right workforce and I think most importantly is about a coordinated collaborative approach to it. It can be work but it can’t be work.

As Simon said it can be government alone. We don’t have the money and it can’t be the investors as well. You also need to have the right brains as well and to be able to map it for us in terms of what innovative approaches we need in the long hand.

So I think that’s how we can probably get it right and ensure the proper execution.

Excellent. Thank you. Andy?

Andy Palmer-Felgate: I think 2025 is going to prove to be a really interesting year because I think there’s been a fear factor in the maritime sector. It’s been the first time, thanks to all the media coverage, that ships’ captains have been genuinely fearful that they might end up in a prison somewhere for having deployed their anchor at the wrong place at the wrong time.

And this has been very powerful. I think it has really driven the behavioural change that we’ll see in the 2025 fault statistics. But people have short memories, so I think that the challenge going forward is how do we perpetuate the messaging and keep it front of mind with the mariners that they need to be cautious around the presence of cables.

Thank you. Andy. Sigurd?

Okay, from my views that the world right now is the power weakness will drive in the wind form in quite spread way. I think that the first one I think is that we need to make a good planning about wind form areas with some optical cable zones. That’s the biggest challenge.

The second one will be that we can see that with economic issues more fishing will happen so the education about fishers and also technology to drive in, quickly identify including the dust, identify the fishing and shipping vessels which cause the cable damage.

The third one will be I think that good things submit has been appeal for that quick and harmonized action from government side from the repair about the cable permit. That’s the three things I think will be important.

Terrific, thank you. Eduardo?

Yeah, in terms of challenges or risks I’ll list maybe three very quickly. I think the first one is probably has to do with geopolitics or tensions that we see in certain areas that cables are being pushed towards outside certain areas and that creates risk when you have too many cables very close to an area because you cannot go through disputed areas and things like that.

So that prevents diversity and a more logical use of the seabed. The second is actually materials. Materials cost and the biggest stress that optics in particular electronics and everywhere is getting by Andy here and his friends like this AI revolution is pushing the industries elsewhere so securing enough fiber, securing enough components and be able to cope with the demand and it’s also related to the previous aspect of geopolitics and see whether everybody has access to the materials that are necessary to put in the amplifiers and so on.

And the last one was just mentioned by Simon there I was going to mention talent I think it’s a challenge that the industry needs to face so I will not expand on that

Thank you so much. Yes a few points we can talk about for quite a while longer but we won’t today. And finally Peter.

Yeah to minimize the occurrence of cable damages you have to address what the causes are and forever we’ve always been fishing and anchoring I know and we can talk about the shadow fleet we can give that a big scary name but what it really is is just a speculative using poorly maintained poorly managed ships capitalising on a geopolitical situation and those ships are travelling through territorial waters in the area where they are and the states and areas should be allowed to intercept those vessels and do inspections on them and hopefully try to minimise having those kind of vessels operating and then secondly, fishing we’ve got to tackle illegal fishing globally and the use of AIS

Excellent, thank you please join me in thanking our wonderful panellists Thank you again for your patience Thank you all now we’re going to a short coffee break, coffee will be served in the patient’s room we’ll be back in 30 minutes for our next panel Thank you, see you soon