Panel 2 – Responding to Disruptions: Crisis Management and Recovery

Summary

This panel discussion focused on crisis management and recovery strategies for submarine cable disruptions. Experts from industry and government discussed best practices for rapid response and recovery from cable faults. The conversation covered fault detection, repair processes, and strategies to minimize service disruptions.

Panelists explained that cable faults are typically detected by network operations centers, which then initiate diagnostic and repair processes. While not every fault constitutes a crisis, multiple simultaneous faults or damage in areas with limited redundancy can severely impact connectivity. The experts emphasized the importance of geographic diversity and redundant routes in building resilient networks.

A key theme was the need for collaboration between industry players and governments to streamline repair processes. Panelists highlighted how regulatory barriers like permitting delays and cabotage laws can significantly slow repairs. They suggested policy changes to expedite vessel access and crew visas for repair operations.

The discussion also touched on strategies to prevent cable damage, such as raising awareness among maritime industries and improving cable route planning. Panelists stressed the importance of viewing submarine cables as critical infrastructure and developing supportive policy frameworks.

Overall, the experts agreed that improving submarine cable resilience requires a multi-faceted approach involving technical solutions, policy changes, and enhanced cooperation between stakeholders across regions and sectors. The discussion underscored the critical role of submarine cables in global connectivity and the ongoing efforts to ensure their reliability and rapid restoration when faults occur.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Crisis response and management for submarine cable faults/damage

– Strategies for detecting faults and rerouting services quickly

– Challenges and opportunities for improving cable repair processes

– The importance of network diversity and redundancy

– Collaboration between industry and governments to enhance resilience

Overall purpose:

The goal of this panel discussion was to examine best practices and case studies for rapid response and recovery from disruptions to submarine cable systems. The panelists explored strategies for crisis management, fault detection, service restoration, and enhancing overall network resilience.

Tone:

The tone was professional and collaborative throughout. Panelists spoke candidly about challenges but maintained an optimistic outlook, emphasizing opportunities for improvement through cooperation between industry and government stakeholders. The discussion had a solutions-oriented focus, with panelists offering concrete suggestions for enhancing submarine cable resilience and repair capabilities.

Speakers

– John Wrottesley

Role: Moderator

Title: Executive Director of the European Subsea Cables Association (ESCA), Operations Manager with the International Cable Protection Committee

– Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani

Title: Director General in the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies in South Africa

– Luan Xiaowei

Title: Vice President of China Telecommunications Corporation Limited, Chairman of China Communications Services Corporation Limited

Expertise: Planning, construction, operation, maintenance, and emergency repair of China Telecom’s submarine cables

– Mike Cunningham

Title: Chief Executive Officer of Crosslake Fibre

Expertise: Developer and owner of non-repeated subsea cable systems

– Jo Conroy

Title: Technical Program Manager at Google

Expertise: Submarine cable industry, managed delivery of Equiano cable

– Andy Palmer-Felgate

Role: Responsible for marine engineering and route planning of submarine cable systems at Meta

Title: Acting President of the North American Submarine Cable Association (NASCA), Director and Executive Committee Member of ICPC

Additional speakers:

– Announcer

Role: Introducing speakers and providing logistical information

Submarine Cable Resilience: Crisis Management and Recovery Strategies

This panel discussion brought together experts from industry and government to explore best practices and case studies for rapid response and recovery from disruptions to submarine cable systems. The conversation covered fault detection, repair processes, and strategies to minimize service disruptions, with a focus on enhancing overall network resilience through collaboration between stakeholders.

Fault Detection and Response

Jo Conroy of Google highlighted that submarine cable faults generally fall into two categories: non-service affecting and service affecting. Network operations centres play a crucial role in detecting faults, operating 24/7 to monitor alarms and preempt maintenance operations. Luan Xiaowei of China Telecommunications Corporation noted that quick detection and rerouting are aided by new technologies and systems.

Andy Palmer-Felgate from Meta emphasised that for most developed and developing nations, diverse multiple paths protected by mesh networks allow for almost instantaneous failover when one cable goes down. This resilience challenges the assumption that every cable fault constitutes a crisis. However, multiple simultaneous faults or damage in areas with limited redundancy can severely impact connectivity, as demonstrated by the recent West African cable outage incident.

Challenges in Cable Repair and Maintenance

The panel identified several key challenges in cable repair and maintenance:

1. Permitting processes and regulatory constraints causing delays

2. Ship availability and regional variations in repair demand

3. Cost challenges for maintenance in certain regions, particularly for island nations

4. Need for expedited processes for repair vessels and crews

Andy Palmer-Felgate noted a shift in fault locations from the Atlantic and Mediterranean to Asia, impacting repair vessel availability and workload. He also stressed the importance of pre-permitting for repair vessels to reduce response times.

Government Role and Policy Considerations

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani, representing the South African government, emphasised the importance of creating an enabling policy environment to attract investment in submarine cable infrastructure. This includes:

1. Declaring cables as critical infrastructure

2. Simplifying permitting and regulatory processes

3. Avoiding mandates that limit cable routing options

Jo Conroy highlighted the significant impact of cabotage policies on repair times and suggested that governments can create an environment sympathetic to reducing mean time to repairs by revising these policies. She also recommended simplifying the vessel clearing in and out process to expedite repairs.

Jordan-Dyani mentioned the development of an African protocol on submarine cables, aimed at improving regional cooperation and protection of cable infrastructure.

Improving Cable Resilience and Redundancy

The discussion highlighted several strategies for enhancing cable resilience:

1. Geographic diversity and redundancy in cable routes

2. Development of meshed networks and diverse, redundant systems

3. Cross-border collaboration on terrestrial networks

4. Lowering barriers to make the business case for new cables easier

5. Consideration of data center locations in defining cable system endpoints

Mike Cunningham cautioned against concentrating all cables in protected corridors, while Andy Palmer-Felgate noted the historical risks of geological events like turbidity currents, suggesting potential benefits to protected areas.

Multi-stakeholder Collaboration

A key theme throughout the discussion was the critical importance of collaboration between various stakeholders:

1. Government, industry, and other sectors

2. Regional cooperation on maintenance resources

3. Public-private partnerships to support improved response

4. Cross-operator collaboration for responding to major faults

This emphasis on collaboration extended to the need for improved cross-border and cross-continental cooperation on cable protection and repair.

Unresolved Issues and Future Considerations

The panel identified several areas requiring further attention:

1. Balancing the need for sovereign repair capabilities with the impracticality of every country having dedicated repair ships

2. Addressing high maintenance costs for certain regions

3. Developing specific mechanisms for improving cross-border collaboration on cable protection and repair

4. Creating awareness programmes for ocean economy players, particularly in the fishing industry, to reduce accidental cable damage

Andy Palmer-Felgate highlighted the pressure on the industry due to systems becoming full sooner and the need to build new systems faster as the ‘upgrade era’ comes to an end. The discussion also touched on the potential impact of cable outages on AI technologies relying on highly resilient, stable connections.

Conclusion

The panel discussion underscored the critical role of submarine cables in global connectivity and the ongoing efforts to ensure their reliability and rapid restoration when faults occur. While there was broad consensus on the importance of collaboration, quick fault detection, and network diversity, the conversation also revealed nuanced perspectives on specific approaches to cable protection and the extent of government involvement.

Moving forward, the industry faces the challenge of balancing technological advancements, regulatory requirements, and the need for increased resilience in an ever-evolving digital landscape. The key to success lies in continued multi-stakeholder collaboration, streamlined repair processes, and the development of flexible, adaptive strategies for submarine cable protection and maintenance.

Announcer: Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, welcome back from your coffee break. Many thanks to GLOW. We’ll be starting panel 2, responding to disruptions, crisis management, and recovery, best practices and case studies for rapid response and recovery from disruptions. Our moderator for the second panel session is John Rothesley, Executive Director of the European Subsea Cables Association, ESCA. Can we warmly welcome John as he takes his seat and he warmly welcomes the rest of the panel. Thank you.

John Wrottesley: Okay. Well, thank you very much for bearing with us. So we’re going to have the next panel, which is on crisis response and responding to incidents of disruption. So just to introduce myself a little bit more so that I don’t confuse anybody, I’m the Operations Manager with the International Cable Protection Committee, and I have another role within the industry as the Executive Director for the European Subsea Cables Association. So just in case anyone is a little bit confused between my two positions. So I’d like to invite all of the panelists to come and join me on the stage, and then we will go through a round of introductions. So if everyone can come up, that would be great. So to introduce each panelist who are joining us today, we have Ms. Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani, who is the Director General in the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies in South Africa. And she leads a government portfolio that compromises 11 state-owned entities connecting South Africa to take advantage of all of the opportunities presented by the digital economy. She champions the creation of an enabling policy and regulatory environment for inclusive economic growth. Then we’re also joined by Mr. Xiaowei Luan, who is currently the Vice President of China Telecommunications Corporation Limited and the Chairman of China Communications Services Corporation Limited. With nearly 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, he’s primarily in charge of the planning, construction, operation, maintenance, and emergency repair of China Telecom’s submarine cables. Mr. Luan will be responding in Chinese, so please have your headsets ready. And we have Mike Cunningham, who is the Chief Executive Officer of Crosslake Fibre. Crosslake Fibre is a developer and owner of non-repeated subsea cable systems. Mike is on the Board of Advisors of Lumitech, a subsea sensing provider, and was formerly on the Board of Quintilian Subsea and the CEO of Arctic Fibre. We also have Mr. Andy Palmer-Felgate, who is responsible for marine engineering and route planning of submarine cable systems at Meta. And he is the acting president of the North American Submarine Cable Association, or NASCA. He’s also a director and executive committee member of the ICPC as well. And last but not least, we have Jo Conroy, who’s a technical program manager at Google. She has over two decades of experience in the submarine cable industry. And she also managed the delivery of Equiano, which links Europe to Africa, linking countries across West Africa. And she brings a wealth of experience both to the international advisory body and also to this panel. So welcome to all of our panelists. OK. So to get started, I’ll come to you first, Jo, if I may. We’re talking today about crisis response. But we maybe need to begin with what that response means for the context of industry and for industry actors. So for those who might be unfamiliar with the processes, can you describe what happens from a cable owner-operator perspective when a fault is detected or initially detected through to a vessel departing to commence repair?

Jo Conroy: Yes, certainly. Thank you. Thank you very much for that kind introduction as well. Yes. So submarine cable faults generally fall into two categories, non-service affecting and service affecting. Usually, when you get a fault on a submarine network, the first entity to detect that fault is your network operations center, which is 24 by 7, constantly monitoring PFE and transmission alarms to try and preempt and try and direct maintenance operations. In the event, it’s a catastrophic failure. But by that, I mean that the fibers are damaged. It’s not just merely a shunt fault, which Kent defined earlier. A shunt fault is merely where you get a water ingress to the power cable on a submarine cable. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will lose service, or it just means that the power feed will then reconfigure so that it can become stable again. But if you damage one or more fibers or all of them, that’s a catastrophic failure. And in that instance, the NOC will generate an event report. And then at the same time, it will contact the operational engineers at both cable stations. So they are dispatched sites. And it’s an international endeavor to try and validate there is a submarine cable fault, and then to try and isolate or localize where that fault is. It’s really, really important to do that diagnostics, because that data is then provided to the maintenance provider to help them manage the planned repair. So the fault localization process can be time-consuming if it’s a shunt fault or if there’s only one or two fibers that are damaged. But they go through that process. They first do gross isolation to try and find out if the fault is between any particular repeater. And then they do some more finessed fault localization, where they do signature analysis on the performance of the optical fibers to try and identify where in that span the fibers are damaged or bent or severed. And then with that information that they’ll report back to the NOC, the NOC then can validate that it’s a genuine fault condition. And then they’ll potentially initiate marine repair. But marine repairs are never entered into lightly because of the cost implication of initiating repair. They’re, you know, millions, multiple millions of dollars to, you know, to a cost investment to send a vessel out to do a repair. The NOC will also liaise with the maintenance service provider to give them a heads up that there’s a potential fault and try and get an early indication of any standby vessels or what the likely response time is going to be for a repair vessel to be mobilized to address that repair. In the case that it is a casual repair, again, it’s really network dependent. If you’ve got a highly meshed network or a highly resilient network, you may not decide to do an immediate repair. You may have just decided to refigure your network, to isolate that fault and to move traffic elsewhere. And that could be for a number of reasons. It could be because you’ve got a fault-solving network and you can’t… There’s many factors that will decide when you have to do a repair, but then the Port Manipulation Agent then has to network to the maintenance provider. And then the maintenance service provider will identify the vessel, if it’s available or if the vessel is occupied, you’ll be in queue to do a repair. The vessel, when it comes inside, it will have to load all the spares. And it’s really crucial to get full localisation data because that will direct or inform what spares you load onto the vessel. And then the vessel will make its way to the cable ground. The service provider then also has to go through that permitting process ahead of time to make sure that the vessel can get into that jurisdiction and initiate that repair. People have alluded to the permitting process and assistance that governments and authorities provide to try and expedite that process.

John Wrottesley: Thanks Jo. So there’s a whole myriad of things which come in that we’ve discussed somewhat today, permitting and technical fault finding and so on. So if I come to Mr. Luan next, if I can ask everybody to prepare their headsets. So to come back to fault detection, how can submarine cable operators quickly detect faults and implement service rerouting in the event of a cable fault?

Luan Xiaowei: Thank you. We have two types of scenarios. For example, if it is a local landing cable, we can identify these troubles. And for those complex cables that don’t land in our area, it is quite complicated. We need to organize some feedback. We need to receive some feedback from the NOC. It may take two to three hours time to locate the position, the trouble or the failure position. So it can also cost more time. And in the past few years, China Telecom has done a lot of trials and efforts. For example, for the cable information, we have put some into the system. And then we can link these cable resources with the transmission channel and the carrying business. So if there is any fault here, we can use the model to identify any possible troubles or any fault causes. It may take only five minutes time. Then we can validate this with this NOC. So it can speed up our trouble-making process. And also we think to solve such issues, how to locate the position quickly, we need to use the cutting-edge technologies and new technologies. And for the locating technologies, we may need some new technologies. So how to locate the channel and the distance, how to measure the distance, we need new technologies to help us. These new technologies can help us to locate these faults and then solve it. Thank you.

John Wrottesley: Thank you very much. So we’ve gone to the very technical. So I’ll maybe come to Andy next. We’ve talked about a repair response and fault detection. Does that constitute a crisis for industry? So can you talk briefly about what might constitute a crisis versus what might just be a typical fault?

Andy Palmer-Felgate: Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks, John. So with island nations that only have one cable, it’s very black and white. Either it’s working or it isn’t. They’ve got a complete blackout and outage. But for most developed and developing nations, it’s much more complex. And fortunately, they nearly all now rely on diverse multiple paths, which are protected using mesh networks. And what they allow is almost instantaneous failover. So when one cable goes down, the traffic is seamlessly rerouted onto the remaining available paths. They have the backup capacity available. So the end users typically don’t notice any degradation whatsoever. And this has been incredibly successful over the years. So much so that the average person on the street until very recently seemed to think that all communications went via satellite. So it’s an indication to really how successful we’ve been at providing this wide scale, long distance connectivity. The industry is also highly collaborative. So, you know, we work together to provide protection in the event of a crisis. We have pairing arrangements. We have interconnects. And, you know, to take the example of the recent fall of West Africa, one of the cables which was unaffected was essentially opened up at very short notice to provide emergency backup coverage for many of the operators, whilst they waited for those repairs to get done. And so in some cases, the crisis can be quite rapidly averted. However, when the system is under a lot of pressure, various things happen. Often the latency will increase because longer distance, diverse routes having to be utilised, the traffic can become less stable. And that may not be a crisis for everybody, but for some applications such as medical or defence or some emerging AI technologies, they rely on really high, resilient, stable connections. So it could be a crisis for them, if not others. Looking historically, most crises have been down to geological events. I don’t know how many people here are familiar with a turbidity current, but a turbidity current is a geological phenomenon that happens on the edge of the continental shelf. It consists of a landslide of mud and water that cascades down into the deep ocean and can be devastating. So we’ve seen examples in the Atlantic, off of Congo, off of Taiwan, many, many geographies around the world where multiple cables have been damaged within hours. One of the most famous examples being back in 1929 in the North Atlantic when 11 cables were cut. We also saw the 2006 event off of Taiwan, where nearly all of the connectivity to Hong Kong was lost. And there was a similar event off of North Africa. So in those cases, we need to work harder to understand geological processes and try and mitigate them. The last thing I wanted to add here is we’re under more pressure now than before, because for a long, long time, the industry has benefited from what became known as the upgrade era, possible to change out the terminal equipment and put far more backup capacity or any capacity on the systems allowed to increase this resilience and redundancy. Now we’re seeing systems that are becoming full much sooner. We’re not able to upgrade them as we were. So the alternative now is to build out new systems. So there’s more pressure now to build faster, build more resilient, diverse, redundant systems in order to allow us to continue to operate as we have historically.

John Wrottesley: Thank you, Andy. So I think the answer is it depends on the context, the region, the type of fault. So it’s reassuring to know that each fault isn’t necessarily sending a multi-stakeholder crisis going. So to come to Mike next. So as Andy mentioned, a vital component of submarine cable resilience is geographic diversity of routes and redundancy. How can governments increase the incentives and reduce the barriers for new cable landings and other policy or other regulatory disincentives that might need to be discussed?

Mike Cunningham: Thanks, John. You know, I think right now there are a number of tailwinds in this regard. The market right now, even Andy, as you mentioned, wants diversity. End users want diversity. Carriers need diversity. And so as a result of that, when there’s going to be a new system, a lot of the demand that supports the business case for that system requires it to be diverse from existing systems, incumbent networks. So I think that is a key element that is providing a tailwind for this, especially in markets that have a number of cables. I think as well another tailwind is there’s been a big change over the last decade where previously your subsea cable was really defined as cable landing station to cable landing station. And as the technology has advanced and the hardware has opened up, the CLS is really not the end or the bookend of the system. It’s really data centers. And so right now you’re seeing a lot of new data centers, which are those hubs for connectivity. And as a result of that, it’s really changing, I think, the ecosystem and the locations where new infrastructure is being built because they’re not being built solely taking into account the cable landing station itself in that location, but taking into account the terrestrial connectivity that’s needed to connect that long haul cable to that hub, which is a big data center somewhere or a number of data centers. So I think those are big tailwinds that exist in the market, generally speaking. So I think really from a government and policy perspective, you should really support that as opposed to do something like mandate specific landings or diversity and kind of plan it with a single sort of view. We’ve talked about having cable protection corridors, and there’s two schools of thought on that. Some are a good thing because you can really protect that area. I sit in the other camp whereby you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket and have one catastrophic event take out all your connectivity. And what a cable protection zone for landings does, as an example, is it mandates a specific landing. And when you start mandating landings or limiting where cables can go, that hurts the business case. As Kent mentioned, when you’re designing a cable, your default is to start off on the shortest route and then you iterate from there. If you define landings or you severely limit how a cable can be designed through not just a cable protection area where cables must go but through other issues with the seabed such as marine protection areas, areas of UXO, that further limits where cables can go, shipping lanes. So I think you want to ensure that when you’re looking at seabed land management, you unconstrain it as much as possible and allow that market that already is providing tailwinds for diversity to really keep going. I think as well that because the systems don’t end at the cable landing station, you need to take into account the challenges of that terrestrial onward connectivity and you have to look at it holistically as well because you don’t want to get caught at the landing station as it were, even from a regulatory perspective. In some areas, you can own and sell dark fiber on a subsea segment, but you can’t own dark fiber or sell it on the terrestrial segment. So that really is one of those regulatory aspects which impacts not the subsea but the use of the subsea. I think that in most areas, those market tailwinds are driving redundancy and diversity, but that won’t happen in all areas where government does need to step in, I think, to support that diversity, which is absolutely required. It should do so in such a way that it does what it’s best at, and that’s being a user of that connectivity as opposed to specifically designing it or trying to develop systems on its own because that’s just not the expertise that government has.

John Wrottesley: Thanks, Mike. So it sounds like there’s a myriad of things. It’s not just about focusing on diversity, but there’s all sorts of things that can lead to a multi-stakeholder consideration, holistic overview of these things. So to come back to crisis response, Jordan, as our sole government representative, hopefully you don’t feel pressure too much there. But in terms of crisis management, there’s presumably different roles for industry and different roles for government. And are there other solutions within government or an industry government response that can mitigate some of those risks from submarine cable damage turning into a crisis?

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani: Thank you very much, John, and a very good afternoon. So speaking about crisis is something that government and the word crisis is we try to avoid, although we seem to trend on a daily basis. So I think you’re quite correct. I want to underscore the issue of the importance of collaboration. There has to be an industry government partnership, I think, from the onset. We understand that as government we are not the main drivers with regards to the cable lay. But firstly, I think creating a conducive environment from a policy perspective is going to be key. I think if we then talk about, because that will also one, drive the investment, but it will also talk about the diversity issue related to it, which is probably what has not gone into a thought. The diversity will then talk to the issue with regards to redundancy so that you basically reduce the risk or mitigate the risk that one would have when you have a cable cut. Fortunately, given the case and scenario for South Africa, we have landing stations for both West and East Africa. So when you then experience challenges on the West Coast, you then have the redundancy line on your East Coast. Similarly, I think it should be applicable across the continent. So if Nigeria is sitting on the West Coast, the redundancy aspect is what we need to look at. How then do you build on the terrestrial network within cross-country to then link up to the other side so that you’re not necessarily just depending on that single cable or the single network coming from your West Coast. So, that would be the one key issue that I would like to perhaps underscore. The other issue, I think, relates to the awareness program. So, to mitigate, again, the risk when it does happen, it’s quite important that you raise awareness. I think earlier on, we had the presentation from Kent. Most of the culprits, or unintentional as it may be, reside from the ocean’s economy players, which is your fishery. So, if you create awareness as far as to how then they should trade about in the waters, that will also reduce the risk as far as the cable cut or cable interruptions and breakages. The ICT sector and industry should then also have some form of a risk mitigation or plan. We also heard about the response time, which is worrying. We had a case and scenario much last year, and I think most of us were adversely affected by it. And, obviously, from the public perspective, they didn’t understand the delay time with regards to this. So, there has to be some level of cooperation as well within the submarine cable systems that could also assist from a response perspective. I’ve been informed that keeping, for example, a vessel in the waters is as expensive as $2 million for a call-out, $2 million U.S. dollars. And people won’t be able to afford that on a regular basis, but I think we can mitigate some of these challenges by, obviously, having proactive response. Lastly, if I may just say, from an African perspective, we developed a protocol on the submarine cable that basically talks to the open access, but also encouraging other cable investors to continue investing in the African market. And that, again, is just building on the resilience as well as the redundancy for it, because we’re still most definitely going to need more capacity going forward. Thank you.

John Wrottesley: Thank you. And, certainly, in terms of attracting investment, that’s enabling-type policy that feeds into cable response times, the mitigations and resilience is really important. Just to focus on that response time, and I think the African case in West Africa, where there was a multi-cable outage, is really, really important to focus on a little bit. I understand that maintenance vessels arrived more than two weeks after the first incidents occurred. So, coming to Jo next, how could this type of timing be improved, and are there different responsibilities for governments or for industry to address these?

Jo Conroy: Certainly, government and industry can work collaboratively to try and improve the situation. Governments can create an environment which is sympathetic to reducing mean time to repairs, and they can do that in a number of ways. I mean, it’s recognized that governments see submarine cables as critical infrastructure. So, the operational… good to see cabotage policies. And cabotage, by that I mean that’s restricting vessels to operate in a sovereign jurisdiction to perform services or transport goods unless they hold a flag of that sovereign nation. Now, submarine repair vessels, by their very nature, are international. They have to go into jurisdictions in and out very quickly, but they are international and they have to be in order to give us the service that we need. So, create an environment where they can do the things that they do best. You know, they can respond really quickly and mobilize equipment, crew, and they can mobilize as quickly as 48 hours, but that’s of no use if they then have to wait three or four weeks to get permission to go into the cable fault area. So, the things that we can do there. So, recognize that they are providing critical service, you know, things like expediting vessel import visas for crew as well. That’s another thing we can do. Also, simplifying the vessel clearing in and clearing out process. When a repair vessel has finished its operation, it then has to transit all the way into a port to clear out and then go back out again. That’s going to add another four or five days onto the next operation. So, there’s things like that we can do. All of those things will reduce your mean time to repair more depots, more vessels, but the other thing, the underlying thing to avoid having to do emergency repairs is having a meshy network, having a diverse, redundant network. And then another aspect that will improve that is making permitting, the permitting process for installing new cables more transparent, more consistent. The approval processes for installing submarine cables, making those consistent so everybody knows how long it’s going to take. It’s commonly known that, you know, deploying a new submarine cable system, it’s not the engineering of the system. It’s not the manufacturer. It’s not the assembly. The critical path item for deploying any new submarine cable system is the permitting. And while we’re not saying it needs to be circumvented, but there are things that we can do to make those processes more predictable.

John Wrottesley: Thanks, Joe. So, I’ll come to Mr. Luan again next. So, if I ask everyone to put their headsets on while I ask the question. So, coming back to incidents of multiple damage. So, in scenarios involving multiple simultaneous cable faults, what strategies are employed to restore services and ensure network resilience?

Luan Xiaowei: Thank you. As an operator, usually, if there is a cable fault, it is a big issue, actually. If there are multiple cable faults, it can be a disaster for the operators. So, for such a scenario, actually, I encountered this before. So, that’s also why I came here to mention this. For the multiple cable fault solution, it seems it happened yesterday. It is so refreshing memory to me. If there is a multiple cable fault from the operator, in my experience, if we work alone, maybe it is quite challenging to recover within a short time. Even if we have a very professional team and a very strong execution, it is still extremely challenging. In my experience, we need to collaborate with other operators. For example, in China, for China Telecom, in such scenarios, we will collaborate with other two major players, the China Mobile and the China Unicom, collaborate with them seamlessly. So, in this way, to quickly recover, it is critical. Also, before, we didn’t collaborate in the early stages, and it caused big challenges to us. But through our collaborations later, it can help to facilitate the process much faster. So, in my experience, the cross-operator collaboration is critical. So, you can effectively improve. prevent any disastrous consequences. So the best solution is to do some connections beforehand, to do some backup, to do some early plannings. And also, between different continents or countries, we can still collaborate, which is also critical, to collaborate across borders and across continents. I think that is also why we gather here, to discuss this is one of the purposes. In the long term, I think the best method is to keep it resilient all the time. So that’s why we use multiple landing stations and reinforce coastal fishing activities or do some emergency plans and backups to prevent any force in the first place. Thank you.

John Wrottesley: Thank you. And so it’s interesting, we’ve talked a lot today about collaboration between governments and industry, but it’s also touching on collaboration between industry and between governments as well. So coming to Andy next, I mean, Joe talked about cabotage and some of the things which can cause a barrier to cable repair commencement, but can you discuss some of the other causes of delay to those processes and what steps, in the view of industry, that governments might be able to take to create a more supportive policy environment for cable repair?

Andy Palmer-Felgate: Yeah. So there’s three main causes of delays to cable repairs, which I’ll address in turn. So there’s ship availability, there’s permits and regulatory constraints, and there’s lack of readiness on the part of the cable owner sometimes. So firstly, with the ship availability question, we see a high level of inconsistency in terms of the number of repairs that are carried out per ship globally. So for example, the repair vessel that is based on Vancouver Island covers a vast portion of the Pacific, but it only does two or three repairs on average. It’s nearly always available. Conversely, in parts of Southeast Asia, the maintenance vessels there are working almost continuously throughout the year, and there’s nearly always a queue of repairs because of just simply down to the numbers. Every ship is doing at least 20 repairs per annum, and the system is overloaded. And we’ve been seeing a shift. So we used to get more faults in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, other regions, but now the faults in those parts of the world seem to be going down, and the faults in Asia are going up. But the number of ships, the position of those ships, the position of the spares in the depots hasn’t really changed. So they’re often tied into long-term agreements. So these things, they need to evolve, and they need some attention. The other issue, as Joe alluded to already, is the problem of permits. And that sometimes fits in with this question of queuing, because often when a cable owner gets to the front of the queue, and they haven’t got their permit, they don’t want to go to the back of the queue. So they will then reserve the ship, pay for the ship on a day rate, until their permit doesn’t arrive, which means it can’t be used by anyone else in the meantime. On the permitting side, how can this be addressed, it’s no coincidence really that those countries that have a sovereign capability, such as South Africa, UK, France, they’re often the quickest to be able to respond, and the ships don’t need to go through much in the way of process. For other countries, it’s understandable that they may want to clear the vessel, review the crew list, et cetera. But for some countries, they can do that in advance, they can pre-permit. These ships are under long-term contracts, they’re not just coming in out of the blue, they’re there, the people are dedicated. So it is possible, in many cases, to undertake some level of pre-permitting, which will expedite the process. Also, when it comes to importation, we see long delays of vessels having to be imported before they can perform the work, often a bond has to be provided. I think governments can try to address that issue as well. In terms of what governments perhaps should not be doing, one thing is for everybody to try to develop a sovereign capability. We saw, as Kent mentioned earlier, there was repairs in 137 different jurisdictions in 2023. We can’t have 137 different cable ships and crews and everyone there waiting to go, it isn’t practical. It does rely on regional cooperation and sharing of the resource to make sure that it’s efficient. Even the USA, as an example, there’s no stand-by cable ships based in the USA, there’s one in Canada, there’s one in Curacao, there’s one in Bermuda, and they serve that region okay. So, it shouldn’t be a go-to solution for governments and we need to look at this from a regional cooperation standpoint. Lastly, I just wanted to talk about preparation. Most cable owners are very experienced, very well prepared, they have good stocks of cable, of jointing kits, they have the procedures in place, they have maintenance contracts with stand-by vessel operators, so they’re in essence self-insuring and they’re paying their bills to ensure that ship is always on stand-by. There are occasionally instances where that does not happen and that can cause delays, so if governments wanted to take a closer look at which cable owners are acting responsibly and are well prepared, then that’s of course a step that could be taken.

John Wrottesley: 137 cable ships sounds quite expensive, but I think more seriously it’s reassuring to understand how the industry is already organized in terms of cable repair resilience and as Vincent Lemaire on the first panel mentioned, submarine cables generally are quite resilient. But Mike, to come to you next, in terms of the repair ecosystem and reducing the likelihood of disruption when damage does occur, what are the challenges and opportunities that you see there in the future and are there regional variations between those?

Mike Cunningham: Yeah, I think that there are a lot of opportunities to minimize disruption from cable outages. The good thing about those and why they’re opportunities is I think a lot of them come with a very, very small price tag. There are challenges as well that come with bigger price tags, but I think fundamentally a lot of it comes down to policy, so to minimize disruption in respect of cable outages, I think the best thing, as has been mentioned a few times today, is to have a mesh network, to have redundant cables, to have the ability to not be reliant on a single cable. And so if you’re looking to increase that number of cables, to increase that ability for redundancy, really it just comes down to making the business case for cables easier. And I think that that is something that, when it comes to permitting costs, licensing costs, that’s something that in many places in the world can be very material. And to the extent that you’re able to lower those to make the business case for developing cables much easier, then you’ve gone a long way to helping that ecosystem where a disruption or an outage to an individual cable will have a much smaller impact. I think the second thing is when it comes down to specific outages, it’s really a function of demand and supply. It’s the demand for a cable repair vessel that can serve that region at that given time. And then it’s the availability of supply during that time. And so, I think if you break down the fundamental drivers of those, you can go a long way to minimizing the disruption. Because when you look at the causes of cable faults, given that the majority of them are due to human factors, policy changes to reduce those cable faults will have a material impact on that demand side of the equation in terms of the demand for a vessel and then even the duration of a vessel that’s in use for a given repair. As it shortens, it increases the availability supply in the market as well. So, I think that is kind of a very key element that if you reduce the causes of it, it is using existing resources really serves to minimize the disruption in terms of the time period where you have an outage. On the challenge side of things, I think for certain regions of the world where you don’t necessarily have access to a cable maintenance agreement or part of a private agreement that has many different cable members, the challenge in that instance ultimately comes down to cost. And just due to geography and lack of an ecosystem, relatively thin markets, islands in certain regions are really then at an economic disadvantage where the solution is an inexpensive one because you either have to deal with extended outages and the cost of repair during outages can be quite a bit greater. And I think that is where I’ll say government has to step in to solve for that problem because they’re the only ones in certain places that can afford the cost associated with that supply.

John Wrottesley: And that brings us very nicely to my next question for Jordan, which is how can this type of public and private cooperation support improved response to cable damage and improve submarine cable resilience? And is that just policy in an enabling policy environment or are there programs that individual states can also do to raise cable awareness to reduce damage?

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani: Thank you very much. But perhaps before I respond, I just want to lean in in terms of what Andy has said, that it does have a bearing from region to region. I mean, you can imagine, as I said, the cost associated with just keeping a vessel on standby and most countries cannot afford that. So, we also need to lean in and find other mechanisms and at the same time without necessarily robbing the vessel industry in this regard. So, back to your point with regards to the role players. I think, first and foremost, what is probably key and I think there’s a greater understanding that we have to then declare submarine cables as critical infrastructure and putting in, obviously, the relevant policy instruments for that. It cannot be at a national level, as we discussed, because it’s cross-border, sometimes even trans-continental. And so, it calls for a greater cooperation amongst the consortiums. The funny thing is, with all the submarine cables, except for the one, where obviously, as I said, there’s a protocol in place, but most of them, it is industry-led. So, governments get invited at the last minute to just do the ribbon-cutting. And I think it’s beyond ribbon-cutting. There has to, obviously, create an enabling environment, even prior, so that we can then be able to have much stronger protectionism for those submarine cables that are being laid. So, I think the cooperation, while it’s there amongst the consortium, it also needs to extend to the relevant governments as well for them to be able to take then that authority. And obviously, from a government perspective, it means we have to then bring in all the other players related to that. So, there has to be greater cooperation between the fishery industry, as I said, the oceans economy players, commercial freight and freight ships, and many other players, obviously, who are, so that we can all then guide against that. And I think what is important, and it was said earlier by the SG of the African Telecommunications Union, was that we need to then develop a framework and a guideline in order for us to have more in terms of the response time frame. The issue of the red tape, as I said, once you have the governments on board and there is this cooperation agreement, it will then compel that we are also able to address the long processes and the multiple regulatory authorities to which one will need to undergo before you can actually dispatch a ship out. But that being said, the cooperation that is there at the moment, I think, between the government, public and private entities, in as far as some of the awareness, I think we just need to build on that particular momentum as well. And any lessons learned across various regions, I think we also need to marry that in terms of best practice. Thanks.

John Wrottesley: Great, thank you. And I think it’s a really interesting point that you say that domestic policymaking needs to have an international outward view to work both with other partners, but also between sectors, that cooperation isn’t just between the cable industry or governments. It’s across fishing and offshore energy and others. So that brings us to the end of our questions, and I’m under strict instructions that we have to finish by five o’clock. So I think we have time for one question, if there are any from the floor. And if I could ask anybody who asked this question to keep it, keep your remarks brief and direct your question to one of the panelists. And I can’t see any, so if you would like to join me in a round of applause. Thank you to all of our panelists, and thank you for being a good audience.

Announcer: We’ll take a group photograph with the moderator and panelists for session two, concluding the panel session. Thank you all, our speakers and our panelists, for your insights on cable repair and recovery. Let’s appreciate them one more time as they take their seats. Thank you. Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, we have come to the end of day one. Tomorrow is another day for us to lend our voices to submarine cable resilience. The organizers would like to invite you all to a gala dinner starting at 6 p.m. in the courtyard with the fountains. That’s at 6 p.m. The gala dinner will start, and the gala dinner is proudly put together courtesy of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC. We’d like to appreciate them for that. Please join us at 6 p.m. The summit continues tomorrow at 9.30 a.m. prompt. Have a good evening and see you tomorrow.

Agreement points

Importance of quick fault detection and response

Fault detection process involves network operations centers and localization

Quick detection and rerouting aided by new technologies and systems

Both speakers emphasize the importance of rapid fault detection and response, highlighting the role of technology and established processes in minimizing downtime.

Need for collaboration in crisis response

Collaboration between operators critical for responding to multiple faults

Public-private partnerships to support improved response

Both speakers stress the importance of collaboration, whether between operators or through public-private partnerships, to effectively respond to cable faults and crises.

Importance of network diversity and redundancy

Mesh networks allow for seamless failover and rerouting in most cases

Importance of geographic diversity and redundancy in cable routes

Cross-border collaboration on terrestrial networks

Multiple speakers highlight the critical role of diverse and redundant network infrastructure in ensuring resilience and minimizing disruptions.

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the need for governments to create favorable conditions for investment in submarine cable infrastructure, including reducing barriers and implementing supportive policies.

Lowering barriers to make business case for new cables easier

Creating enabling policy environment to attract investment

Both speakers highlight the challenges posed by regulatory processes and permitting requirements, emphasizing the need for streamlined procedures to expedite cable repairs.

Need for expedited processes for repair vessels and crews

Permitting processes and regulatory constraints cause delays

Unexpected consensus

Regional cooperation on maintenance resources

Regional cooperation on maintenance resources

Cross-border collaboration on terrestrial networks

Despite representing different perspectives (industry and government), both speakers agree on the importance of regional cooperation in maintaining and enhancing submarine cable infrastructure, rather than each country developing its own capabilities.

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the importance of quick fault detection and response, the need for collaboration in crisis management, the critical role of network diversity and redundancy, and the importance of creating enabling policy environments for investment in submarine cable infrastructure.

Consensus level

There is a high level of consensus among the speakers on the key issues related to submarine cable resilience. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the challenges and potential solutions in the industry, which could facilitate more effective cooperation between stakeholders and the development of more robust policies and practices for submarine cable protection and maintenance.

Different viewpoints

Approach to cable protection zones

We’ve talked about having cable protection corridors, and there’s two schools of thought on that. Some are a good thing because you can really protect that area. I sit in the other camp whereby you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket and have one catastrophic event take out all your connectivity.

Looking historically, most crises have been down to geological events. I don’t know how many people here are familiar with a turbidity current, but a turbidity current is a geological phenomenon that happens on the edge of the continental shelf. It consists of a landslide of mud and water that cascades down into the deep ocean and can be devastating.

Mike Cunningham argues against concentrated cable protection zones, while Andy Palmer-Felgate highlights the historical risks of geological events, implying a potential benefit to protected areas.

Unexpected differences

Overall assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were relatively minor and focused on specific approaches to cable protection and the extent of government involvement in promoting diversity and redundancy.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among the speakers was low. Most participants shared similar views on the importance of collaboration, the need for improved response times, and the benefits of diverse and redundant cable systems. The minor differences in approach do not significantly impact the overall consensus on the importance of submarine cable resilience and the need for multi-stakeholder cooperation.

Partial agreements

Both speakers agree on the need for government involvement to support diversity and redundancy in cable systems, but they differ in their emphasis. Mike Cunningham suggests government should step in only where market forces are insufficient, while Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani advocates for a more proactive government role in creating an enabling policy environment.

I think that in most areas, those market tailwinds are driving redundancy and diversity, but that won’t happen in all areas where government does need to step in, I think, to support that diversity, which is absolutely required.

Creating a conducive environment from a policy perspective is going to be key. I think if we then talk about, because that will also one, drive the investment, but it will also talk about the diversity issue related to it, which is probably what has not gone into a thought.

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasize the need for governments to create favorable conditions for investment in submarine cable infrastructure, including reducing barriers and implementing supportive policies.

Lowering barriers to make business case for new cables easier

Creating enabling policy environment to attract investment

Both speakers highlight the challenges posed by regulatory processes and permitting requirements, emphasizing the need for streamlined procedures to expedite cable repairs.

Need for expedited processes for repair vessels and crews

Permitting processes and regulatory constraints cause delays

Key takeaways

Rapid fault detection and service rerouting is critical, aided by new technologies and mesh networks

Major challenges in cable repair include permitting delays, ship availability, and regional variations in repair demand

Government policies can support cable resilience by creating enabling environments and simplifying regulatory processes

Geographic diversity and redundancy in cable routes is vital for network resilience

Multi-stakeholder collaboration between government, industry, and other sectors is essential for improving cable protection and repair

Resolutions and action items

Develop frameworks and guidelines to improve repair response times

Declare submarine cables as critical infrastructure

Create more transparent and consistent permitting processes for new cable installations

Increase awareness programs for ocean economy players to reduce accidental cable damage

Unresolved issues

How to balance the need for sovereign repair capabilities with the impracticality of every country having dedicated repair ships

Addressing the high costs of maintenance for certain regions, particularly island nations

Specific mechanisms for improving cross-border and cross-continental collaboration on cable protection and repair

Suggested compromises

Regional cooperation on sharing maintenance resources rather than each country developing sovereign capabilities

Balancing the need for cable protection zones with allowing flexibility in cable routing to support business cases

Pre-permitting processes for repair vessels to expedite responses while still allowing for government oversight

Submarine cable faults generally fall into two categories, non-service affecting and service affecting. Usually, when you get a fault on a submarine network, the first entity to detect that fault is your network operations center, which is 24 by 7, constantly monitoring PFE and transmission alarms to try and preempt and try and direct maintenance operations.

Speaker

Jo Conroy

Reason

This comment provides crucial technical context about how cable faults are detected and categorized, setting the stage for the rest of the discussion on fault response.

Impact

It led to a deeper exploration of the technical aspects of fault detection and response processes throughout the panel.

For most developed and developing nations, it’s much more complex. And fortunately, they nearly all now rely on diverse multiple paths, which are protected using mesh networks. And what they allow is almost instantaneous failover. So when one cable goes down, the traffic is seamlessly rerouted onto the remaining available paths.

Speaker

Andy Palmer-Felgate

Reason

This insight highlights the resilience of modern cable networks and challenges the assumption that every cable fault is a crisis.

Impact

It shifted the conversation towards discussing the nuances of what constitutes a true crisis versus a manageable fault, and emphasized the importance of network diversity.

We’ve talked about having cable protection corridors, and there’s two schools of thought on that. Some are a good thing because you can really protect that area. I sit in the other camp whereby you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket and have one catastrophic event take out all your connectivity.

Speaker

Mike Cunningham

Reason

This comment introduces a counterintuitive perspective on cable protection, highlighting the potential downsides of concentrating cables in protected corridors.

Impact

It sparked a more nuanced discussion about the trade-offs involved in different approaches to cable protection and routing.

Governments can create an environment which is sympathetic to reducing mean time to repairs, and they can do that in a number of ways. I mean, it’s recognized that governments see submarine cables as critical infrastructure. So, the operational… good to see cabotage policies.

Speaker

Jo Conroy

Reason

This comment bridges the gap between industry needs and government policy, offering concrete suggestions for how governments can support faster cable repairs.

Impact

It led to a more focused discussion on specific policy measures that could improve cable resilience and repair times.

For the multiple cable fault solution, it seems it happened yesterday. It is so refreshing memory to me. If there is a multiple cable fault from the operator, in my experience, if we work alone, maybe it is quite challenging to recover within a short time. Even if we have a very professional team and a very strong execution, it is still extremely challenging. In my experience, we need to collaborate with other operators.

Speaker

Luan Xiaowei

Reason

This comment emphasizes the critical importance of collaboration between operators in responding to major cable faults, based on real-world experience.

Impact

It shifted the discussion towards the importance of industry-wide cooperation and preparedness for major incidents.

Overall assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by progressively deepening the technical understanding of cable faults and repair processes, challenging assumptions about crisis management, highlighting the complexities of cable protection strategies, emphasizing the crucial role of government policy in supporting cable resilience, and underscoring the importance of industry-wide collaboration. The conversation evolved from technical details to broader policy and strategic considerations, with a consistent focus on practical measures to improve cable resilience and repair times.

How can new technologies improve fault localization for submarine cables?

Speaker

Luan Xiaowei

Explanation

Improving fault localization speed and accuracy is crucial for reducing repair times and minimizing service disruptions.

What are the emerging AI technologies that rely on highly resilient, stable connections, and how might cable outages impact them?

Speaker

Andy Palmer-Felgate

Explanation

Understanding the requirements and vulnerabilities of new technologies can help inform future cable system designs and crisis response strategies.

How can the industry address the increasing pressure to build new systems faster as the ‘upgrade era’ comes to an end?

Speaker

Andy Palmer-Felgate

Explanation

This is important for maintaining network resilience and redundancy as existing systems reach capacity limits.

What are the best practices for creating awareness among ocean economy players, particularly in the fishing industry, to reduce cable damage?

Speaker

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani

Explanation

Reducing human-caused cable damage is a key factor in improving overall network resilience and reducing repair frequency.

How can governments and industry collaborate to make the permitting process for new cable installations more transparent and consistent?

Speaker

Jo Conroy

Explanation

Streamlining the permitting process could significantly reduce deployment times for new cable systems, improving overall network resilience.

What strategies can be employed to improve cross-operator and cross-border collaboration during multiple cable fault scenarios?

Speaker

Luan Xiaowei

Explanation

Enhanced collaboration could lead to faster service restoration and improved crisis management in severe outage situations.

How can the global distribution of repair ships and spares be optimized to better match current fault patterns and reduce repair times?

Speaker

Andy Palmer-Felgate

Explanation

Addressing the mismatch between fault locations and repair resources could significantly improve response times and reduce outage durations.

What policy instruments and frameworks can be developed to establish submarine cables as critical infrastructure on an international level?

Speaker

Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani

Explanation

Recognizing cables as critical infrastructure could lead to better protection, faster repair processes, and improved international cooperation.