Danger for submarine cables: ITU establishes working group

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"Submarine cables transport 99 percent of international data exchange," reports Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). But almost every day, one of these cables fails somewhere; more than 200 interruptions were reported in 2023. Repairs are expensive and can take time. To improve prevention, the ITU has now founded a working group together with the industry association International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC).

The new body is called the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience and is intended to both collect and provide information on procedures that have proven themselves in practice. These best practices are intended to help governments and companies to reduce the risk of damage, lay and repair cables more quickly and generally prevent communication disruptions.

Eloquent silence on sabotage

On its website, the working group emphasizes the importance of submarine cables and mentions natural disasters, ageing and unintentional damage caused by human activities such as fishing and anchoring as threat factors. The most unsavory destruction is not mentioned at all: sabotage. In theory, the easiest way to avoid this would be to refrain from it.

In Europe, the damage to two data cables in the Baltic Sea recently made headlines, which is likely to be part of the Russian sabotage campaign against the West. The operators were able to organize and afford quick repairs. Such attacks are commonplace in other regions of the world. The two submarine cables on Taiwan's Matsu Islands were cut 30 times between 2017 and 2023, as The Diplomat reported in spring 2023.

Back then, the 13,000 residents finally came back online after a 50-day internet diet – they had to share a 2.2 gigabit microwave line, making it impossible to open websites or stream anything. The microwave line has since been quadrupled, and Taiwan is building 700 satellite ground stations across the country as a backup for its undersea cables.

In September, Singapore commissioned two submarines from the German manufacturer ThyssenKrupp. Their mission is to protect submarine cables. The submarines are powered by fuel cells, which is quieter than diesel generators and enables them to operate for long periods underwater.

Repair expensive and slow or very expensive

Sabotage of submarine cables is so effective because global repair capacities are modest. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, there are 77 cable-laying ships worldwide, but only 20 of them specialize in repairs. And they are on average 28 years old, which means they are often approaching the end of their life expectancy.

Meanwhile, the average repair time is getting longer and longer. In 2022, it shot up to almost 80 days, partly as a result of the huge volcanic eruption in the sea off Tonga. But even in the long-term trend, repairs are taking longer and longer, with the average approaching 50 days, according to the latest Submarine Telecoms Industry Report. The fate of the Taiwanese on the Matsu Islands is therefore not a statistical outlier.

There are several reasons for this trend. On the one hand, there are many more submarine cables than 20 years ago, but not as many submarine cable ships. On the other hand, the work has become technically more difficult. In addition, there are geopolitical problems with access to the damaged cables. The industry complains about bureaucratic hurdles and, currently, especially in the Middle East, about a lack of security.

"If there is no significant investment in the cable ship fleet or certain regions simplify their repair protocols, the trend (of increasing repair times) could continue," warns the Submarine Telecoms Industry Report 2024/2025.

Although many submarine cable operators are trying to pool their resources regionally and reduce costs through a joint approach, repairing a damaged cable still costs at least six figures. If several cables are damaged at the same time, there can be a bidding war for repair vessels, where smaller network operators that supply small island markets are often unable to keep up.

New York Declaration: Exit Chinese technology

On the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in September, the USA launched the New York Joint Statement on the Security and Resilience of Undersea Cables in a Globally Digitized World. The aim is international cooperation between partners who trust each other (i.e. excluding the People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation) for the security, reliability, interoperability, sustainability and resilience of the expansion, repair and maintenance of undersea cable infrastructure.

In addition to the USA, the European Union, Australia, Japan, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Zealand, South Korea, Tonga, Tuvalu, the United Kingdom and some EU states have signed individually. The states only want to allow "reliable and trustworthy cable components and services", i.e. no technology of Chinese provenance. In addition, service providers and network operators should have "transparent ownership, partnerships and corporate governance structures".

The ITU is the oldest sub-organization of the United Nations (UN) and is based in Geneva. The first chairs of the new International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience are the Nigerian Communications Minister Bosun Tijani and the Portuguese Sandra Maximiano, chair of her country's regulatory authority. The 40 other members come from all six ITU world regions and represent submarine cable operators, telecom network operators, governments, regulatory authorities, industry associations, Google, Meta, the World Bank and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank. The working group will meet at least twice a year, starting with a virtual meeting this month, followed by a meeting in Abuja in February.

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