SubTel Forum Issue #5 - Convergence and Innovation in Submarine Telecoms by Submarine Telelecoms Forum

FORUM

SubmarineTelecoms

1 An international forum for the expression of ideas and opinions pertaining to the submarine telecoms industry

Fourth Quarter 2002

Contents

Advertisers

Editors Exordium

Breaking News

Emails to the Editor

So, where do we go from here? Bill Carter

Tracking the Cableships Latest locations of the world’s cableships

Global Marine Systems Ltd 35

Protection against financial aggression System maintenance in today’s market Jim Byous 40

7 Letter to a Friend

Improved methods of cable route planning Bob Stuart 11 ITG completes Apollo burial Bill Wall Convergence Doug Ranahan Cableawareness.com An internet based awareness strategy David Millar and Bruce Rein

In space no one can hear you scream . . . Trading in Cyberspace Dick Faint 30

WFN Executive Search

PTC 2003

Fugro

Telegeography

Jean Devos

Corning Cable Systems – NSW

Diary Dates Upcoming Conferences

Nexans

Thales

International Telecom Group

4, 5, 47

ORGANISING A CONFERENCE?

Smit-Oceaneering Cable Systems SubOptic

37, 49 39

Give your exhibition or conference maximum exposure to the submarine telecoms industry. Advertise your event in

Submarine Telecoms Forum

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING

and reach all the key people. Email: advertising@subtelforum.com 1advertising@subtelforum.com

Front cover pic courtesy of Corning Cable Systems - NSW 2

Navigation Analyst WFNStrategies

Data Analyst WFN Strategies

Submarine Telecoms Forum is published quarterly by WFN Strategies, L.L.C. The publication may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the permission of the publishers. Liability: while every care is taken in preparation of this publication, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information herein, or any errors which may occur in advertising or editorial content, or any consequence arising from any errors or omissions. Submarine Telecoms Forum is an independent commercial publication, serving as a freely accessible forum for professionals in industries connected with submarine optical fibre technologies and techniques. The publisher cannot be held responsible for any views expressed by contributors, and the editor reserves the right to edit any advertising or editorial material submitted for publication. © WFN Strategies L.L.C., 2002 Contributions are welcomed and should be forwarded to the Managing Editor: Wayne F. Nielsen, WFN Strategies, 115 Environs Rd, Sterling, VA 20165, USA. Tel: +1 (703) 444-2527, Fax:+1 (703) 444-3047. Email: editor@subtelforum.com Advertising - Europe/ME/Africa - Hildegard Peltier Tel: +[33] 1 4785 2207 Email: HPeltier@SubTelForum.com Advertising - Americas - Pamela Barnett Tel: +[1] (520) 384-6420 Fax: +[1] (520) 384-6422 Email: PBarnett@SubTelForum.com Advertising - Asia Pacific - Carole Marsh McCormick Tel: +[61] 2 48 611993 Email: CMcCormick@SubTelForum.com Designed and produced by Ted Breeze BJ Marketing Communications, Colchester, UK..

Exordium

Welcome to the 5th issue of Submarine Telecoms Forum, and indeed our 2nd year in publication. To say it has been a roller coaster of a trip so far, would certainly not underestimate the last year or so. But thanks to considerable support from our industry, we remain alive and well and vocal, and we hope, still serving the common good. When we started this venture, we promised you, our readers, the following: · That we will provide a wide range of ideas and issues; · That we will seek to incite, entertain and provoke in a positive manner. We sincerely hope that we have lived up to these goals, and continue to provide you with useful, interesting and thought-provoking material. This issue continues in that vein, by providing insight into new software technologies impacting planning, installation and maintenance; the convergence of terrestrial and submarine technologies; the economics evolution of system maintenance; the difficulties associated with internet trading; the new submarine cable industry paradigm; as well as the significant insights of Jean Devos. Of course, our ever popular, “where in the world are all those pesky cableships,” is included as well. Good reading.

Wayne F. Nielsen Publisher

BREAKING NEWS . . BREAKING NEWS . . BREAKING NEWS . . Dutch Sea Cable bv of Harlingen, The Netherlands recently announced its start-up as a specialist submarine cable installation contractor, serving the power, telecommunications and offshore industries. The fresh start of the Company is on the initiative of the ex Van der Stoel Cable management team, supported by Rederij Waterweg bv, a specialist supplier of coastal, work and support vessels for offshore, dredging and cable related projects.

FLAG Telecom Ltd., which operates a global, highspeed communications network, recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and named an interim chief executive officer. Mark Spagnolo, a member of FLAG’s new board of directors, will serve as interim Chief Executive Officer until a permanent leader is found. The bankruptcy reorganization reduced FLAG’s debt load and gave creditors ownership of the company.

News page sponsored by:

Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies recently announced that their bid for Global Crossing was approved by the bankruptcy court. The deal calls for the companies to inject $250 million into Global for roughly a 61% stake, a mere fraction of what it cost to build Global’s fiber optic network. Bondholders, who are owed more than $12 billion, will control the remaining 39%.

In order to provide a more comprehensive information service to our clients, we have entered into an arrangement with Lloyd’s Register - Fairplay. LRF maintains comprehensive databases of commercial vessels (www.sea-web.org/), ports and companies www.portguide.com2 In order to qualify for a free (www.portguide.com). trial to either of these services, please contact LRFTrialOffer@SubTelForum.com.

Hildegard Peltier recently joined the team at Submarine Telecoms Forum responsible for Advertising Sales in the European region. After 12 years, she retired from Alcatel Submarine Networks

as Public Relations Manager in 2002. There, she was responsible for many of the company’s marketing communication activities, including its participation in SubOptic 1993, 1997 and 2001. She continues to support the Executive Committee of SubOptic, responsible for its organization and management of this major event for the submarine industry in Monaco in spring 2004.

Carole Marsh McCormick recently joined the team at Submarine Telecoms Forum responsible for Advertising Sales in the Asia Pacific region. She possesses six years of telecom marketing, sales and business development experience complemented by four years of general management. She is an established event planner for international telecommunications conferences, as well as possessing expertise in market/product management, global business strategies and financial management. In addition, she has extensive communications and human resource management skills.

BREAKING NEWS . . BREAKING NEWS . . BREAKING NEWS . . Topaz Energy and Marine SAOG of Dubai UAE and DSC recently announced a new cooperation in the field of submarine cable installation. TEAM, operating out of Dubai has purchased and taken delivery of the DP cable lay vessel CLV TEAM Sea Spider. Dutch Sea Cable, a new specialist submarine (power) cable installation contractor from Harlingen, The Netherlands, has entered into a charter contract for the vessel. TEAM Sea Spider will be initially employed for installation and trenching of a variety of submarine telecom cables in the Baltic Sea area.

Tyco International Ltd. recentlyannounced that William B. Lytton has been appointed Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the company. Mr. Lytton has a wide range of experience as a corporate counsel at major industrial companies and most recently served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for International Paper Company. Mr. Lytton is also a former federal prosecutor who served eight and a half years in Chicago and Philadelphia. News page sponsored by:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently ruled invalid an accounting practice used by some telecoms companies to justify network capacity swaps. The new ruling means any companies that relied on the invalid procedure to inflate revenues artificially may be forced to restate their financial results, citing a memo circulated by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The AICPA, the accounting industry’s trade and lobbying association, distributed the memo outlining the new policy at the request of the SEC. The August 6th memo made it clear that not all of the transactions at issue were in question. However, it warned a company’s chief executive and chief financial officer “should be advised to give consideration to this matter prior to certifying the financial statements previously filed with the SEC.”

Worldcom’s creditors said they will push the company to widen the review of its accounting procedures prior to 1999, according to The Wall Street Journal. The move comes on the heels of last week’s Worldcom admission that its financial restatements will now total $7.2 billion, instead of the previous

disclosed $3.85 billion, to reflect improper accounting of profits as far back as 1999. The creditors say they want to expand the review to years prior to 1999. Worldcom representatives said they have no intention of expanding their investigation to include years prior to 1999. Creditors said they will use their own forensic accountants to conduct the review.

After years of rapid declines, long-haul bandwidth prices on many major routes have stabilized — even risen — in recent months, according to new research published in TeleGeography’s Bandwidth Pricing Database. On the world’s busiest communications route, New York-London, monthly lease prices for 155 Mbps circuits have increased slightly each month since April 2002. Over the same period, bandwidth prices for most major U.S. domestic routes have experienced only small declines of 2-4%, with increases in a few cases. Why are many of these densely supplied and well-established routes experiencing price stabilization? First, some of the most aggressive carriers are no longer competing across the same range of markets due to restructuring; and second, price is no longer the primary consideration of bandwidth buyers.

Emails to the Editor

Thank you for your Email and the short cut to the Submarine Telecoms Forum. I briefly visited this website and found the information to be quite interesting.

Spectacular job putting this together...it’s very impressive. Dr. William J. Barattino, Global Broadband Solutions, LLC

Bill Brock, For BP America Production Co ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○

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It was quite informative and interesting. I do not think that you will be willing to provide such an information services free of charge for a long time. Best regards, Sumio Yamano, Sumitomo Ocean Development & Engineering Co. Ltd.

Thanks for a great read and even though the business is “way down where the music plays”, wherever that may be, there is always a light at the end of the tunnel/ cable.

PROFESSIONAL RECRUITMENT A confidential service for the supply of specialized positions for the submarine cable sectors serving oil & gas, telecoms and defense industries l Direct Placement Support l Executive Search l Confidential Reply Service Visit our website or contact: Lisa5advertising@subtelforum.com Fontaine Managing Associate – Recruitment WFN Strategies, LLC lfontaine@wfnstrategies.com3 lfontaine@wfnstrategies.com [+1] 410-268-2036 Job seekers can forward CVRésumé to our confidential résumé database at resumes@wfnstrategies.com

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Good work on the latest edition. Les K. Valentine, NEXANS Norway

2advertising@subtelforum.com

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5o, where do we go from here? Yes, it is the biggest meltdown I’ve ever seen, in fact the only one. There was a drop, a significant drop, in undersea cable demand in ’96, but we came out of it in really good shape. Before that, the industry was pretty much controlled by a few dominant carriers and the market was capped according to their needs. Everybody reading this probably remembers the downturn in ’96 but there were also some lessons coming out of it that might not have had a lot of staying power. Admittedly, ’01 and ‘02 have been a lot worse in every way, but the future will still see huge need for new cables and my prediction is the demand will occur pretty quickly. The irony is, however, that I don’t think anyone in the industry will be prepared or ready for the up tick. Instead of rallying and riding a surge tide to success, the attempts to unravel the new order of things will tend to stall any recovery. The woes of the last year will be with us long after they should have

dissipated, as suppliers and customers seek to understand what is going on and find new directions in a different paradigm. That’s what happened in and after ’96. A whole new paradigm came out of that downturn and very few customers, very few carriers, and very few suppliers were able to understand and answer the new demands of an explosion on new carriers, dot coms and Moore’s law in undersea capacity. Perhaps if they had, the old guard would have maintained leadership in the industry and too many upstart companies wouldn’t have overbuilt so much. Be that as it may, we are about to see it happen again and I don’t think anyone has learned any lessons. Coming out of this downturn there will again be a new paradigm, new directions and new entrants.

Why so positive? First of all, demand isn’t going away. Communications is here to stay. The need has never decreased and ever increasing applications, with 7

By Bill Carter, Dorado Development Group ever increasing size of applications, and ever increasing numbers of users will continue to push demand for more bandwidth. Simply stated, that’s the formula – Users X Applications X Size. None of those are decreasing. Never will. It is just a matter of time before we use up what we have and need more. Size. (Bandwidth required for any particular application) Remember when Microsoft Word was delivered to you on a half dozen 1.4Mb disks? Wasn’t that long ago. Now, an old version chews up 80Mb of space on my computer. Any doubts that the size of applications is getting bigger and bigger? As memory got cheaper and cheaper, the larger the chunks we ate up. Mb’s went to Gb’s in a heart beat. Also true, as we all know, in bandwidth requirements. We have an insatiable appetite for more graphics, better resolution,

video, visual tours and reality. And did I tell you we won’t put up with a 15 second download! Applications. (Uses – cad/cam, music, movies, games, shopping) There was a time when I thought the techies were going to eat up all the data transmission. So wrong. It’s

leisure, entertainment, recreation and retailing. We can’t get enough and every day somebody makes it easier to have more fun and spend more money. Every day we get a new twist or turn and every new application fuels the development of more applications. The new killer application hasn’t gotten here yet – something that will eat up bandwidth like facsimile ate up voice circuits. Users. (People and access) Users, also, are still increasing in number. But here the potential increase is astounding. Not because the general population of the world is increasing (though it is), but because the users today represent such a small minority of the population. User growth will be tenfold or a hundredfold the growth in population. Access is the critical ingredient to user growth and teledensity and compudensity can give some insight into growth rates. Internet cafes, however, can cause huge increases in traffic without significantly affecting teledensity and compudensity numbers. The important element is the enormous number of people today that don’t have access and the technology and imagination that will undoubtedly lead to getting them access and at higher and higher bandwidth rates. 8

Demand is a function of each of these parameters and the multiplier effect of the combination. Tom Soja was the first I heard that connected these piece parts in the fashion of a formula. Others have talked about it also. But in the particular area of international connectivity, there is another factor that plays into the equation. That is the difference, geographically, between the residence of the application and the residence of the user – Dislocation. If the application and the user reside in the same place, e.g. a computer, then the impact on communications demand is nil. If one resides in Europe and the other in the US, the impact is significant on demand across the Atlantic. Dislocation. (Distance between user and application) This is probably the most significant element in the disconnect between domestic capacity growth and international capacity growth. International demand will grow much quicker than national demand.

When will it happen? Of course, I don’t know the answer to that. But there are some benchmarks that should put it in to some perspective. Keep in mind

that traffic continues to grow at pretty significant rates. What we might be interested in is when will the need for undersea cable cause more cables to be constructed. And it is a function of how much capacity we have installed when will we use it up. The first hypothesis I would make is that International demand is going to grow much quicker than National or domestic demand. Why? Because there are so many more potential users outside of Europe, Japan and the US and the applications are in Europe, Japan and the US. There is a much larger market of non users that are not in places where applications reside. According to some sources, there are 46 million Internet users in China. But the population of China is well over a billion. That represents an enormous market to reach and most of the applications they want to access will be out of the country for a number of years. The second hypothesis is that there is a whole lot less capacity under the sea to any place than there is terrestrially in the US and Europe. It’s not a matter of how much bandwidth we can cram on a fiber, it’s a matter of how many fibers.

With current technology, we are pretty much limited to 8 fiber pairs in a single repeatered cable. Compare that to terrestrial systems capable of stuffing 864 fibers in a cable. We are mechanically handicapped by physics under the sea, and even if someone should come up with a system that doubles the number of fibers, we will still be at only 16. So if demand just grows evenly, the undersea networks will run out long before the terrestrial systems. The third element of this quicker rather than later scenario is the planning cycle for undersea cables. Typically, carriers start building their next system when the current traffic bumps into 50% of their current capacity. The stories I hear are that they are pushing that to 60 or 70%. If that’s the case, then two things. First, they are probably nervous and will react to any quirk in traffic demand. And, second, they will want to move back to the cushion of 50% and will for a short period want more. Consequently, I believe growth in demand will continue its inevitable path upward and pretty soon the pendulum will swing back. 9

Bill Carter is currently a General Partner with Dorado Development Group, a company consulting in international communications, undersea fiber optic systems and project management for large international networks and undersea systems. Prior to that, he was President of Global Crossing Development Co. and Vice Chairman of Global Marine Systems. From 1990 to 1997 he was President and CEO of AT&T Submarine Systems. He has been a member of the World Telecommunications Advisory Council to the ITU and an advisor on telecommunications and economic development to the US Government.

Lessons of ‘95/’96 When we popped out of the ‘95/’96 doldrums, there were significant differences in the industry with both cause and effect for the upturn. Technology changes, supplier changes, customer changes, etc. I believe the same will happen here. The environment is shaping up for critical swings and changes and it will have the same cause and effect impact. Some of these changes: 1. New players involved through acquisition of assets — Example: Singapore Technologies and Hutchinson Wampoa with Global Crossing. 2. New players involved through bankrupt suppliers — Example: KPNQwest leaving customers to find new suppliers to complement existing services. 3. System suppliers selling manufacturing facilities — Examples: Alcatel and Tyco Electronics selling facilities. 4. System supplier changes on certain systems — Example: PCL went Chapter 11 and Tyco terminated the supply contract for default — no warranty — upgrades are not committed – PCL may need to find someone different to upgrade their system.

5. Architectural/Engineering changes — Example: move to IP protocol instead of SDH - fundamental change in how networks are run, managed. 6. Technology Changes — Example: Lucent has discontinued manufacture of the BWM. Systems using BWM will have to change..... to what?? Optical switches, something else? 7. Limited and scaled back operation centers — Example: shutting down NOC’s and managing systems from cable stations or centers designed for other uses. Impact? 8. Systems that have been out of service for a while or sold off in bits and pieces — Example: cables in the Atlantic with potential cable faults during out of service periods, backhaul sold off, major deficiencies not fixed after installation by supplier. These changes will require knowledge of the past and insight into the future to succeed tomorrow. People with experience in the past and the ability to understand how it translates into the changes we are experiencing will be the winners. The pendulum is already swinging back and we ought to be ready to catch it going up the other side. 10

Navigation Analyst Successful candidates will provide direct technical and analytical support in the area of track reconstruction, navigation data analysis, technology development and modeling of system errors. Tasks include processing, analyzing, evaluating and exploiting navigation and related shipboard instrumentation data acquired from various deep ocean data collection systems in the Washington, DC area. The position requires: l 3 to 5 years experience in navigation systems and related technology to perform technical analysis in the ocean engineering field l A basic working knowledge of applicable systems is required, including gimbaled and or strap down inertial systems; radio-navigation aids such as GPS; and, acoustic navigation systems such as doppler sonar navigators, correlation velocity logs, and long- and ultra-short baseline systems. l Moderate proficiency with personal computers (Windows® 9x, 2000 and NT®) and commercial software (MS Office) to perform basic analytical functions to obtain, organize and present information relevant to exploitation of data. For job specific information www.wfnstrategies.com/new_page_7.htm Send CVs/Resumes to: Lisa Fontaine Managing Associate Recruitment Services lfontaine@wfnstrategies.com [+1] 410-268-2036

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Improved methods of

CABLE ROUTE PLANNING

The planning, installation and maintenance of submarine cables require the collaborative efforts and close coordination of widely dispersed individuals and information. In the last three years, methods used for submarine cable route planning have been completely transformed. Paper charts and simple spreadsheet-based tools have been replaced by accurate PC-based software that operates in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. All data critical to the design are stored in a single database and are readily retrievable and viewed as layers on a GIS map. This software has become the standard for cable route planning. Typical data sources that are accessed and geo-referenced by a single software pack-

by Dr. Jose M. Andres Makai Ocean Engineering age include data such as bathymetry, soil types, side-scan images, aerial photographs of landing sites, CAD drawings, marine charts (e.g. Admiralty Charts, ECDIS (S57), Route Position Lists (as designed, as laid, and as repaired), cable assemblies, and installation notes. In addition, drivers are available for accessing nearly any commonly used image or database (e.g. ESRI GIS, Access, ODBC, SQL). A common data set, a method of accessing a variety of data sources, and a method of exchanging these data enhances the collaborative development by reducing errors and time. 11

This article describes new developments of an integrated software for submarine cable route planning, specifically in the area of digital terrain mapping (DTM). Incorporating mapping tools for DTM into the existing PC based GIS software further enhances the quality of the final route selected.

Survey data used in cable route planning Before a final cable route can be selected, system providers need to complete a detailed multibeam survey along the selected preliminary cable route. This survey is particularly critical in areas where the cable must be buried (depths up to 2,000 m deep). For a given project, final bathymetric data could easily consist of 30 to 100 million data points. Sur-

veyors usually provide these data in several gridded files with grid sizes varying from 2 to 10+ m resolution depending on depth. Before the introduction of GIS planning software, the planner did not have the tools to properly make use of these large amount of bathymetric data collected by the surveyor. Instead, the planner simply estimated the bottom profile along the selected preliminary route and made use of marine charts to estimate the presence of large features and side slopes along the route. With the introduction of GIS planning software, a more complete and automated use of the bathymetric data has been achieved. Using the collected point data, surveyors are able to provide the planner with bottom contours along the entire surveyed swath, with a typical between 2 and 10 meters. With these contour data, the GIS planning software is able to automatically generate the bottom profile and slope graph along the selected route. As the cable planner makes modifications to the cable route to avoid large slopes and hazardous areas, the GIS planning software computes a new bottom profile and slopes along the entire route. This iterative procedure is facilitated by properly linking Plan and Profile

Figure 1: Cable Route Planners can now seamlessly link electronic route data, plan views, route profiles, and the cable assembly. Routes are selected with simple click and drag techniques and precise RPL and cable assembly lists and diagrams are created automatically.

views of the cable route, where any changes in one of the views are immediately reflected in the other view (see Figure 1). Following this procedure, an optimal cable route can be easily identified. Despite these important advances in cable route planning, which have allowed users to decrease planning time by five to tenfold, the current GIS software still does not make optimum use of all the collected bathymetric data. Bottom contours do not always provide the planner with the most accurate representation of the true bottom 12

features and the lateral slopes between adjacent contours. Where cables are buried using plows, detailed knowledge of along and across track slopes is particularly important. In the last few years, several cases have been reported where plows have been damaged and even loss at-sea as a result of hazardous seafloor features not detected by using only bathymetric contour lines (Palmer-Felgate, 2002). Therefore, it is essential that the selected final route takes into account the existence of any such hazards. To accomplish these goals, Makai Ocean Engineering has developed, with input from route planners and surveyors, versatile seafloor mapping tools to directly process digital terrain data to allow the planner to identify any potential hazards. The new software module is part of the GIS software already in use for cable route planning and uses the same integrated MS access database. With this approach, the user does not have to iterate between different software packages from different vendors to process digital terrain data; the planning process is performed with increased efficiency and with fewer possibilities for critical errors.

Processing digital terrain data Bathymetric data are usually provided by surveyors in N-E gridded files that cover the entire surveyed area. The size of the grid cells (dx,dy) in each file provided by the surveyor depends on the resolution of the data acquired (mainly determined by the footprint of a single echo-sounder beam). For a typical multibeam echo sounder with single acoustic beam of 1.0o mounted on the survey vessel, resolutions of one meter in depths of 50 to 60 m, and nine meters in depths of 500 m can be expected. To decrease the footprint and improve seabed resolution in deep waters, the multibeam echo sounder can be mounted on a tow fish and flown closer to the seabed during the data acquisition process. In order to maintain the accuracy of the data provided by the surveyor the resolution of the original survey data must be preserved, either by using Triangulated Irregular Networks (TIN) or by selecting gridding methods and cell sizes that provide minimum smoothing to the original data. Since seabed resolution is a strong function of the footprint which is directly related to water depth, the best approach to minimize smoothing is to create a series of data blocks (or pages)

along the entire surveyed route so that the resolution for each page is approximately constant. In the new software, these pages are automatically created once the user inputs the desired overlapping between pages (some overlapping is desired to assure depth continuity across the page boundaries). In addition, pages that contain no more than 1 to 2 million data points ensures fast creation of maps and charts on any desktop or laptop PC (i.e. less than one minute of processing time using 512 MB RAM). For the creation of final gridded files within each page, a choice of fast interpolation methods are available to the user. Given the large number of points to be processed, either a fast triangulation method or a minimum curvature method is preferred. Gridded files with approximately one million points can be generated in 1 or 2 minutes using either of these methods. The grid size for each page is automatically selected by the software to match the smallest footprint of the data in each page in order to accurately maintain the shape of the seabed features detected by the survey while avoiding the creation of high frequency, non-existent features. 13

Figure 2: GeoTiff images, pictures that are geo-referenced into the GIS database, enhance the quality of the information available on any given site.

The generation of all the pages along the surveyed route, including reading the raw data files, generating the gridded data and creating shaded relief images for each page is completed in a batch process. For a typical survey with 50 million data points, the entire process can take one hour. These internally created files are stored, and the original raw data sets are no longer required unless the user wants to specifically edit the raw data before re-gridding a specific page of data. A sample of a large single page generated along a route which includes a shaded relief image created during batch processing and several smaller pages of soil type data are shown in Figure 2.

Create shaded relief maps with user definable sun elevation and azimuth (Figure 4). l Allow the user to superimpose the RPL on any of the created maps and quickly generate accurate slope graphs along and across any desired route section. These along and across path profiles are generated by

Figure 3: Color coded map showing contours and water depths for a specific page containing a half million surveyed points. The generated map can be automatically georeferenced and viewed on the GIS Plan View window .

Figure 5. 3D surface visualization showing route and seabed profile.

Mapping tools To meet the requirements for submarine route planning, the mapping tools developed are able to: l Create contour colored maps (colors, number and spacing of contour lines are user defined and maps can be directly loaded into the GIS database) which allow the user to visualize either water depths or the maximum seabed slopes (Figure 3).

Figure 4. Shaded Relief Map showing RPL and seabed profile and slopes.

cutting an accurate slice through the entire grid, and therefore, can be used to compute more accurate values of seabed distances and slacks than those computed using the conventional method of intersecting bathymetric contours. l All maps must be automatically geo-referenced as Geotiffs and be viewable as layers on the main GIS window (Figure 2). l Optionally, the capability to load and visualize sections of the survey data in 3D may be desirable (Figure 5).

Conclusions

Dr. Andres earned his master’s of science and Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from the University of Hawaii. He has been with Makai Ocean Engineering since 1984. For the past decade, he has been involved in the development of software for the planning, simulation and installation of submarine cables and he has participated in many of Makai’s record settings cable deployment operations. He is the author of numerous papers on submarine cable planning and installations and he is currently Vice President and head of the Submarine Cable Division.

Recent software improvements in the submarine cable industry have helped move the planning and installation of submarine cables away from art and more toward science. Powerful tools such as common GIS databases allow collaborative development and close coordination between all parties involved in a cable project. Tools specific to the planning provide fast, error-free creation of cable assemblies and route position lists. The new mapping tools for DTM developed within the GIS planning software allow the user to accurately process and visualize the large amounts of point data collected along an entire survey area. With these new techniques, accurate slopes along and across track can be easily computed and incorporated in the calculation of seabed slack. Shaded relief images in conjunction with detailed color contour maps can be automatically geo-referenced and incorporated in the overall GIS database to further facilitate the selection of the optimum cable route. These new developments are also being incorporated into GIS software designed to guide the at-sea installation and maintenance of submarine cables. 15

Data Analyst Successful candidates will provide technical and analytical support in the field of ocean engineering data acquisition at a customer site in the Washington, DC area. Tasks include the processing, analysis, evaluation and exploitation of navigation, remote sensor, and shipboard instrumentation data collected from various deep ocean systems. The position requires: l BA, BS or higher degree in any scientific, engineering, mathematics, statistics, or computer programming discipline, or, for the non-degree individual, 5-10 years’ direct experience in a similar data collection environment. l Three to five years’ technical analysis or similar experience with personal computers, particularly with Windows (95, 98, 2000 or NT), or, similar experience with UNIX workstations performing technical analysis is required. l Image editing, desktop publishing, and photogrammetry experience is highly desired for this position. For job specific information – www.wfnstrategies.com/new_page_6.htm Send CVs/Resumes to: Lisa Fontaine Managing Associate Recruitment Services lfontaine@wfnstrategies.com [+1] 410-268-2036

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19-23 January 2003 Honolulu, Hawaii USA www.ptc.org/ptc2003 Pacific Telecommunications Council • 2454 S. Beretania St. 3rd Floor • Honolulu, HI USA 96826 • Tel: +1.808.941.3789 • Fax: +1.808.944.4874 • Email: ptc2003@ptc.org • Web: www.ptc.org

ITG completes cable burial for Alcatel on the Apollo project The International Telecom Group (ITG) recently completed three shore end submarine cable installations for Alcatel’s submarine networks activity on the Apollo Project. The Apollo Fiber Optic Cable System is a state-of-the-art optically amplified submarine cable network comprising two trans-Atlantic cable routes of approximately 13,000km that cross between Europe and the USA. The initial system capacity of 160 gigabits per fiber pair is upgradeable using dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM). At the European end a 6.7Km section was installed and buried at depths up to 2m in Lannion, France. ITG mobilized their modular cable lay system along with their 5m Jet Plow aboard the vessel MV Union Beaver at Flushing, Holland then loaded cable at the Alcatel factory in Calais and completed the operation at Lannion.

equipped with an ITG fixed share Jet Plow submarine cable burial system. The Thomas C is a 57m LOA converted Offshore Supply Vessel fitted with a custom designed modular submarine cable laying system. The Thomas C is particularly suited for Shore end work, repeaterless telecom systems and submarine power cable installations. The landings at both Manasquan and Shirley were completed to full burial specification, on schedule and within budget. ITG Cable Jet Plow Deployment at Lannion, France

Subsea burial was achieved to specification in a particularly challenging bottom environment that included a mixture of firm gravel & large cobble. At the US end two landings were completed. A 1.4Km section was laid and buried at Manasquan, New Jersey and then a 2.3Km section was installed at Shirley, New York. ITG utilized their cable lay vessel MV Thomas C 17

ITG’s MV “Thomas C” sets up off Manasquan New Jersey

www.fugro.com 18

The convergence of transmission systems for submarine and terrestrial applications has long been anticipated and debated, but how realistic is this convergence theory? Much of the analysis often points to similarities in the technologies used in each sector, but other factors, including industry financial drivers, should also be examined.

The turmoil in the telecommunications industry over the last twelve months is without precedent. The capital spending drought by carriers is much deeper than anyone expected and even incumbent service providers are much weaker than previously thought and the degree of competition among service providers and equipment vendors remains 19

very high. In sum, pressures for major changes in the industry are running high. This article will detail some of the industry pressures and how the adoption of several technologies pioneered in the submarine world are now changing the terrestrial optical networking equipment, which may ultimately benefit the submarine market.

APPLICATIONS Terrestrial DWDM developments For terrestrial optical systems, a great deal of development over the last two years has been put into increasing the reach of optical signals in order to attack the high cost of regeneration in networks. This constitutes the largest cost of existing long-haul networks. A typical network deployed in the year 2000 uses 10Gbps technology with a maximum reach of 600km. A major difference with terrestrial systems is that a typical range between optical amplifiers is between 70km and 100km which is much greater than the 20km spacing typically found in submarine systems. The introduction of extended long-haul and ultra long-haul (ULH) technologies has increased the system reach figure to as much as 4,000km. While this reach figure is not enough to cross a continent without regenerators, once this range of reach is achieved, the economic gains decelerate with further performance gains. Many of the technologies used to increase performance, including Forward Error Correction (FEC), were pioneered in submarine systems. The result is that state of the art terrestrial systems can eliminate the vast majority of regenerators in the network,

thus cutting as much as 70% of the long-haul transport costs. The second major benefit of extended long-haul systems is the ability to significantly reduce the provisioning time of new wavelengths as crews are no longer needed to deploy regeneration cards throughout the network. Predicting network growth is a highly uncertain task, so reduced provisioning time lets operators operate closer to a “just-in-time” model where network bandwidth is deployed only when a customer order triggers the deployment. It seems that in many respects the DWDM terminal requirements have become quite similar for terrestrial and submarine systems. Not so for optical amplifiers, where the submarine application has much more stringent unavailability requirements to meet. This is a fundamental difference between these applications that is likely to maintain the need for unique amplifier solutions for each application.

Network Architecture Many industry observers have commented on the opportunity to optimize the network inter-connection between submarine and ter20

Doug Ranahan is the director of business development of Ceyba. He comes to Ceyba from Nortel Networks, where he held management positions within the optical network planning group, conducting network economic studies that evaluated optical technologies including metro DWDM, IP over optics and multi-terabit transport networks. Ranahan has a degree in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from Queen’s University, Kingston.

restrial systems. Two primary opportunities are possible; the first is to optimize the protection switching, which involves moving to a mesh restoration architecture on both the submarine and terrestrial sides. The enabler here is an optical switch that can support the

restoration requirements of both. The second opportunity is optimizing the backhaul of traffic between the cable landing station and the point-of-presence (POP). This involves rethinking how best to backhaul traffic, which is currently done with standard terrestrial DWDM but could alternately be provided by extending the submarine or festoon system to reach all the way to the POP.

TECHNOLOGY This section is a comparative survey of the technologies found in submarine and terrestrial systems, highlighting important commonality and differences.

Forward Error Correction FEC techniques have played an invaluable role in making high capacity, error-free long distance optical communications possible. FEC extends transmission distance by using extra overhead bandwidth in combination with computational power at the terminals to correct for noise-induced errors. It was first applied commercially in the TAT-12 cable system and has been a standard feature of subsequent systems. FEC has now been adopted in most terrestrial long-haul systems

currently offered and has enabled these systems to increase optical reach from 600km to distances approaching 1,500km. This has been made possible, in large part, to good availability of commercial silicon that has made the systems implementation of FEC much easier. The technique is even beginning to find application in metro systems, in some cases to extend reach, in others to reduce the cost of the transmitter and receiver designs using lower performance components.

Chromatic Dispersion Management Overcoming the affects of chromatic dispersion has long been a principle design goal of submarine systems engineers, but until recently this has not been of major concern to their terrestrial counterparts. This is now changing as extended long-haul systems face the same challenges of accurately compensating dispersion over longer wavelength paths and also across the entire transmission band. The engineering solutions that have emerged are quite different. In submarine systems dispersion is managed primarily in the fiber plant in a distributed manner, while terrestrial designs use a “lumped” strategy. Here the accumulated dispersion is compen21

sated periodically at amplifier sites using a dispersion compensating fiber. What is new in these terrestrial systems is the high degree of compensation accuracy required, which has led to the development of new types of compensating fibers. By contrast, submarine systems have long managed dispersion by carefully engineering the cable plant by combining alternate sections of positive and negative dispersion fiber to produce a resulting very low dispersion cable. This concept is now starting to crossover into terrestrial applications, as fiber manufacturers have this year introduced dispersion managed cable products. While these products have yet to see widespread deployment, they enable network cost savings and simplification of link engineering.

Raman amplification Raman amplification has been commercially deployed in both terrestrial and festoon systems for several years now. Raman component costs have come down substantially and there are reasonable grounds to expect increased application of Raman. These systems offer a means to provide amplification at a much higher optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR), which translates to a significant improvement in optical reach. In terrestrial systems, Raman is essential in order to support optical reach much beyond 1,500km or long spans. The link here between festoon and terrestrial applications is that the best designs to address long spans use Raman amplification to overcome both signal attenuation and maintain a high OSNR figure. Commercial optical transmission systems such as the Ceyba C420™ are able to address both applications from the same modular platform.

INDUSTRY ENVIRONMENT Pressures for change Without question, the pressures now facing the telecommunications industry are immense, with no quick fixes available to relieve the pain. Firms at every level of the

supply chain from service providers, systems vendors, components through to contract manufacturers are in search of a new, profitable business model. This has resulted in a major industry restructuring that is now in progress but currently most active in the optical component sector. How far this restructuring process will go and where it will end is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that the industry needs to rethink many of its assumptions and search for greater efficiencies and ultimately, a return to profitability.

Equipment shipments Global optical systems sales have dramatically fallen from highs seen in the year 2000, with estimates for 2002 reaching fully 65% lower. Even though the recent track record of market forecasters has been less than stellar, their current guidance of flat sales for the next 24 months seems plausible, if not encouraging. To see for yourself just how radically the market forces have shifted, try pulling up just about any optical market forecast from 2000 and compare to the current market reality. Global DWDM equipment spending on terrestrial and submarine applications has 22

been on a comparable level in dollar terms. What differs is in unit shipments, where terrestrial systems have had higher unit volumes and lower prices on a per-gigabit basis. The higher relative price of submarine DWDM equipment has been influenced by a number of factors including a higher degree of customization, lower unit volumes, fewer vendors and a lack of start-up firms driving a rapid innovation agenda. In the boom years, greater customization of equipment to specific market segments and applications was sustainable given the tremendous revenue growth driving the industry. That has utterly changed now and the volumes previously seen are unlikely to soon return. As pointed out earlier, many of the technology requirements are converging between the two sectors, making it possible to now serve both sectors from a common product platform. The potential here is to bring the lower cost benefits of terrestrial terminal equipment to the submarine and festoon sector, with higher unit volume bringing benefits to both sets of customers. The challenge is how innovation can better serve multiple applications to save costs, without compromising customer functionality or quality.

R&D spending Another driver of industry consolidation is research and development costs. The boom years saw large increases both in development budgets and also more equipment vendors enter the market. With the sales collapse, the industry as a whole cannot afford the aggregate levels of R&D spending now in place. Even with widespread layoffs in development organizations, R&D expenditures now exceed 50% of sales at several vendors, a level that is clearly not sustainable. This will increase pressure on firms to maximize the effectiveness of reduced R&D spending.

TeleGeography

The Authoritative Source for International Telecom Statistics and Analysis www.telegeography.com

S U B M A R I N E B A N D W I D T H

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In S U B M A R I N E B A N D W I D T H 2 O O 2 , TeleGeography takes a closer look at the supply and demand factors impacting the volatile global submarine cable industry. The report features TeleGeography’s plain-English explanation of the submarine cable business, as well as nearly 70 submarine cable system profiles and full-color regional

Summary The bottom line is that pressure for change and innovation has never been greater for the transmission equipment in both submarine and terrestrial sectors. Many long-held assumptions need to be re-examined. Greater convergence of technology, application and equipment pricing are possible in the terminal equipment used for submarine, festoon and terrestrial systems. The benefits for carriers are within reach: lower cost systems and greater functionality.

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Mention Subtel when you place your order for Submarine Bandwidth 2002 or the Bandwidth Pricing Database https://www.telegeography.com/?affiliate_id=10005 to receive a complimentary poster-sized wall map of the world’s submarine cables.

cableawareness.com AN INTERNET-BASED CABLE AWARENESS STRATEGY BENEFITING BOTH CABLE OWNERS AND THE FISHING INDUSTRY Given the dramatic increase in the number of submarine cables installed in recent years and the fact that fishermen worldwide are developing practices that involve the deployment of heavier equipment in deeper water, cable awareness and cable protection are more important today than ever before. Damaged cables result in significant revenue losses to the cable owners and damaged or lost fishing gear results in significant revenue losses to the fishermen who may have snagged a submarine cable. Thales GeoSolutions (Pacific), Inc., has recently launched a web site that is aimed at providing cable awareness information on behalf of cable owners to the fishing industry. Over the past three years, Thales GeoSolutions has been promoting a conceptual system that would provide fishermen and other interested parties with “basic RPL data” and “cable awareness charts” over the

David Millar Thales GeoSolutions (Pacific), Inc., USA Bruce Rein GCI, USA Internet. This concept is now a reality and the site has been live since August 2002. GCI, which owns and operates Alaska United Fiber Optic Cable System, has recently added CableAwareness.com as part of its cable protection strategy. It is hoped that the site will gain acceptance and ultimately become the source for all cable awareness data and products.

The Traditional Approach to Cable Awareness The concepts of cable awareness and cable protection are not new. In fact, they have been issues since submarine cables were first installed in the mid-1800s. Despite significant increases in both the number of submarine 25

cable systems and submarine cable owners and the technological advances of “the day”, cable protection is handled very similarly today as it was 25 years ago. Cable owners typically provide and advertise a telephone “Help Line”. They now also provide access to cable information via their own website. There has also been a recent movement to set up local arrangements with local fisheries groups. In all cases, the cable owners and/ or maintenance authorities produce cable awareness charts, chartlets and/or electronic charts and distribute these to fishermen directly or via fisheries groups. While these methods “work”, there is significant room for improvement. There is currently very limited coordination and collaboration between cable owners. There is no single source of information for submarine cables within a given area. As a result, fishermen or fishing organizations must go to several different sources for cable information

within a given area. In many cases, there will be several cable awareness charts available for the same area, each focusing on the cables of a particular owner. In addition there is no standardization in the type of cable awareness information provided and no standardization in the way updates are handled. It is obvious that there is a great deal of duplication and redundancy and that it is very confusing to the fishing community.

The CableAwareness.com approach to Cable Awareness The ultimate goal of CableAwareness.com is to provide a single source for accurate and up-to-date “cable awareness charts” and “simple” RPL data. It is hoped that this will address many of the deficiencies outlined above. CableAwareness.com provides the infrastructure for cable owners to manage and distribute cable awareness data and products to mariners operating in the vicinity of their submarine cable. Cable RPL data and current notes on any repair or maintenance activity may be uploaded or edited remotely via an Internet browser, allowing site management from any location. Data security is enacted by infrastructure as a virtual private network

and by using secure socket layer 3.0 as data encryption protection during transmission. The site allows fishermen, fishing organizations and other interested parties with a mechanism to view, print and download both coordinate listings of the cables and limited extents “chartlets” that show the cable routes over standard nautical charts. There is also a 26

proximity tool, where the user can enter geographic coordinates and the system will provide a listing of the closest cables along with a range and bearing to each of those cables. In addition, there are quick links available that provide emergency contact information for the owner of any submarine cable system.

Benefits to the Cable Owners and Operators From the owners’ perspective, the system provides a powerful and inexpensive method to provide the same information that has historically been distributed to mariners. There is no loss of control, in the sense that cable owners still upload and edit their own data and each

owner has secure access to their data only. This data is immediately superimposed over the appropriate backgrounds and served via the map server. The site also provides a single source, controlled record of the cable positional data throughout the cable owners’ company, disbursed over a wide geographic area. All operations and engineering departments will have 27

instantaneous and user friendly access to the positional data. Traditionally, these data were distributed through a company-wide intranet system, but due to data control, compatibility and software licensing issues through different departments, there has been limited access to this data. So, not only can this information be used outside the organization for cable protection purposes, it can also provide great value within an organization. Best of all, the cable owner does not need to worry about expensive infrastructure investment or server administration and support. Instead, the cable owner can rely on a subscription to a reliable and professional third party service that has considerable experience in dealing with their requirements. By utilizing a web-based system, the cable owner has access to the data for review or update from any worldwide location on a 7/ 24 basis. This enables prompt and well-informed action in the event of an emergency. The proximity function allows the user to input a geographical location and calculate the bearing and distance to the nearest cable segments. Thus, input of a position received from an emergency call can aid in any decision related to the “cutting away” of fishing gear, if a submarine cable is nearby.

Benefits to the Users and Fishermen From the user’s perspective, the system provides ‘round the clock access to the latest cable information for “all” cables within their operating area. The concept of a single site to access this type of information increases the likelihood of routine usage from fishermen. As new cable systems are introduced, and as the value and the capacity of cable systems continue to increase, such an approach to cable protection will be extremely important to both cable owners and fishermen. Ideally the site will reduce or eliminate the current problem where extensive research is required to identify and locate all cables within a particular area. For the fishermen, it would greatly increase the awareness of “all” cables within a region and not just the most advertised or most recently damaged cable. Given the ever-increasing pressures within the fishing community to fish areas outside normal and/or known grounds, the site can provide a quick reference of the cables within an area. The site is very easy to use and users can easily identify the names of cable systems and find out the owners of those cable systems within their area of interest. What’s more,

they can quickly get to emergency contact information, RPL data, and the chartlets themselves.

Conclusions For CableAwareness.com to succeed and ultimately achieve its goal, there must be a change in the mindset of submarine cable owners. Cable owners must become more willing to share basic submarine cable data. These data are already provided to international hydrographic offices, are already published on their charts, and of course, are also already provided to local fishermen and local fishing organizations, in the form of RPL listings and chartlets. CableAwareness.com does not change the type of information that is distributed, it simply provides an infrastructure for consolidating the information and changes the manner in which that information is distributed. Because of this consolidated infrastructure, the administrative and management burden and as a result the costs to individual cable companies will decrease. GCI has recognized the value of CableAwareness.com and it is hoped that other cable owners and cable protection organizations will ultimately adopt such an approach to cable awareness. 28

Mr. David Millar is Vice President of Navigation Services and Commercial Software at Thales GeoSolutions (Pacific) Inc., in San Diego, California. He graduated from Mount Allison University (Canada) in 1988, with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Math and Physics and received a Bachelor of Science in Survey Engineering Degree from the University of New Brunswick (Canada) in 1991. He has been with Thales GeoSolutions (Pacific) since 1991. During this period, Mr. Millar has directed development of several software products that are now used extensively in the submarine cable installation industry. Bruce Rein, GCI Director of Alaska United Fiber System, graduated from the US Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point in 1986. He continued his education at the University of Wisconsin college of Engineering for 2 years before joining AT&T Submarine Systems as a Shore End Cable Installation and Burial Engineer. In1997, Bruce left AT&T and joined GCI, based in Anchorage, Alaska. Bruce was the program manager of the Alaska United Fiber System being planned by GCI, and he has remained with GCI to maintain and operate the system within GCI.

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In space no one can hear you scream . . . As we discovered in the film “Alien”, in space no one can hear you scream. It is a thought that must pass through the minds of any business caught in a trade over the Internet (“Net”) that goes wrong. Much the same happens, you can scream and call for help all you want, there is little help in Cyberspace and little chance of enforcing any help. You cannot (yet) put a body into Cyberspace. So if you get caught in some

dodgy deal done over the Net you may feel like putting your trading partner into Cyberspace – and leaving him there – but you will have to find a way around the problem. The problem is that in Cyberspace “Identities” are capable of being hidden or disguised. What you see may not be what you get. This can be useful to some people when it comes to payment but the lack of secure 30

identification over the Net is a recognised problem. What is not so well known to the business world at large is what the service providers, those who own the right to use submarine cables and other fibre-optic networks, are doing about it in order to protect their clients. The world moves on and it will be only a matter of time before we see such service providers dragged into court for a failure of due diligence towards their clients. The golden rule of trading is “know who you are dealing with”. A wise Trader does not overlook frequent credit checks on his trading partner. A wise Trader knows his counterpart and his financial standing and is careful to play (trade) in a known backyard. That is the trade is linked to a known jurisdiction where the obligations under the contract can be easily enforced should one party fail to meet its obligations and no settlement is reached. English law is readily accepted by all manner of Traders. A known partner and careful attention to detail is required. Care to these details builds confidence in the International arena. Your bank and Underwriter expect this of you. Indeed lawyers may now argue that a

lack of “due diligence” could stop recovery from your Underwriters, the bank and even the other side. The way you do business in the real, or physical, world also speaks for you when people are looking for a trading partner. However with E-commerce there is a problem. On the Net, these physical clues are not so freely available. Small Traders with not so good reputations can build an electronic presence (a “website”) just as easily as a bigger and longer established Trader. It can be run from anywhere — even a beach hut in the Caribbean. Messages can be drawn down, and contracts agreed, while travelling to check “offshore” bank accounts. An offer, or acceptance, can be given on the move and this lack of a physical place where acceptance is made makes it difficult to apply the usual rules of construction. Trading already takes place over the Net. Between two partners who know each other, and want it to work, ways will be found to overcome any problem “by agreement”. This will be in just the same way as present business is done — partners who want to do good business overcome the occasional minor

problems that occur in the real world without claiming that the contract is at an end. It is said that fraud is waiting to explode on the Net. There is some protection in law for transactions covering the use of stolen credit card details. I am suggesting that we take the current fraud problem and look at it from the point of view of International Trade. With the International Sale of Goods (and services) we are looking at an altogether different scene. One where the fraudsters are just sharpening their knives. Identification and the control of the means of identification will have to be closely examined. At present there is an apparent limited use of so-called digital certificates. A digital certificate must be a way of proving, over the Net, that whatever is being certified is verified and verifiable. The future (and trading over the Net must be the future) will require that any system will have to use high-security virtual ID papers. That future, and any potential trading platform that stands up to be counted could be part of that future, must provide that any visitor to a website is able to obtain a digital certificate (a virtual ID) as proof that site is 31

After spending 10 years in the British Merchant Navy, Dick Faint joined Lloyd’s as a marine claims specialist. He then spent 4 years as trouble-shooter for a European shipping fleet. After 15 years with Andre & Cie, Dick started Charter Wise Ltd. Awarded his LLM at Southampton University in shipping law, he is a Member of The Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and The Institute of Export, and is presently vice-chairman of the GAFTA E-commerce committee.

what it claims to be and that that proof can be verified (perhaps by something like Dunn & Bradstreet). Digital certificates are encrypted using a public key system. If I understand this correctly, when a certificate is pre-sented, the recipient’s web browser automatically decrypts it using the key sent along with it, but cannot encrypt it again. The Owners, or users, of a digital certificate have the only private key and, if it all works according to plan, only they can

encrypt their certificate. This would seem to be along the lines of an interbank “tested key” system used for Letters of Credit If there is a proper control of the key it should prevent fraudsters being able to download a digital certificate and copy it. It is not “encryption” as a process that is the problem. The European Union has issued a directive calling for the legal recognition of electronic signatures. In English law this was brought about by the introduction of “The Electronic Communications Act (ECA). The ECA requires the Secretary of State to keep a Register of service providers who will/should be providers of cryptography services. No electronic contract will be valid without such verification. American law has also moved to allow “electronic contracts”. Under English law, once that register is up and running it should provide some peace of mind. But there is still a gap. It seems rather odd to the writer, and difficult to confirm, but while the ECA is now law there does not yet seem to be a register as required by Part1, Sect 1, of the ECA. Absent this register, how will we know that the provider of this pri-

vate key is for real? What will be the “come back” if it goes wrong? There does seem to be a possible standard system to link the digital certificate to the person or company providing that private key. This is the Public Key Infrastructure (PM). What is not clear is how far this has got. In the USA there is a company called “VeriSign”. In the UK BT have set up BT Ignite as the UK partner of “VeriSign”. There are probably many others. Deutche Bank has launched something called “Paybox” which links two important elements of any contract, security and payment. If I understand it correctly (and like many others the writer is feeling his way into this brave new world) Paybox allows Buyers to pay signed-up Paybox members (presumably Sellers) simply by giving out a mobile phone number. Sellers ring a freephone number; enter the Buyer’s mobile number and the amount to be paid. The Paybox computer then calls the Buyer at that mobile number, and (probably by way of an alien voice) requests entry of a PIN to authorize payment. When this pin number is entered into the system it acts as a trigger to allow 32

electronic payment by direct debit from the Buyers bank account. A PIN number must authorize every direct debit and there is no need to sign up for another credit account. The Grain & Feed Trade Association (GAFTA), one of the world’s largest trading associations, have created an “E-Commerce” committee and it could be possible that this committee will look at GAFTA developing something along these lines for members. Presently it would seem that only a few “High Tec” companies can issue digital certificates. Few people will trust someone they have never heard of. Perhaps these companies will find their way on to the Register to be kept by the Secretary of State.

The GAFTA E-commerce committee will need to examine security both from the points of view of individual members and for the Association itself. It may be that GAFTA will be well placed to provide some of the required services to the Trade for a fee. The fact that GAFTA is well known and understood to represent the best interests of the Trade at large would alleviate one of the problems. If the identity of the service provider were a Trade Association that itself would provide some security. The Trade would know and trust a service that its own Association would provide. This does not mean that GAFTA will take this route. The GAFTA E-commerce committee was formed to examine the problems and to gain a better understanding of the problems inherent in E-commerce. Only some of the problems of trading over the Net (E-commerce) have been mentioned here. It will be some time before recommendations can be put forward from that committee and, to avoid screaming in Cyberspace, Traders should tread very carefully indeed. Until the rules are known, and better understood, the best advice to any Trader is to treat the Net as an Alien world. 33

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A global guide to the latest known locations of the world’s cableships, as at OCTOBER, 2002. SAILING DETAILS (or last known location) Vessel Name

Built

Best Contact

Asean Restorer Atlantida Baron Bold Endeavour Bold Endurance C.S.Iris C.S.Monarch C.S.Nexus C.S.Sovereign C.S.Wave Mercury Cable Innovator Cable Installer Cable Retriever Discovery Dock Express 20 Elektron

1994 1988 2002 1999 1979 1976 1975 1972 1991 1982 1995 1980 1997 1990 1983 1969

SINGAPORE TELECOMMUNICATIONS 11156 TRANSOCEANIC CABLE SHIP 7374 DOCKWISE 9000 ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND 9388 SECUNDA MARINE 9216 HSBC 3795 HSBC 3795 FISHER & SONS 11000 BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS 11242 GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS 10105 GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS 14277 GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS 2986 SINGAPORE TELECOMMUNICATIONS 11026 FRIARY OCEAN 8248 DOCKWISE 14793 STATNETT ENTREPENOR 1628

Flag

Sailed Date

SINGAPORE SPAIN (CSR) NETHERLANDS UNITED KINGDOM BARBADOS UNITED KINGDOM UNITED KINGDOM UNITED KINGDOM UNITED KINGDOM JAPAN UNITED KINGDOM UNITED KINGDOM SINGAPORE LUXEMBOURG NETHERLANDS ANTILLES NORWAY 35

12/09/02

15/09/02

02/10/02 24/09/02 07/10/02 29/09/02 14/09/02 09/10/02 14/10/02

Port

Country

Singapore Vigo Toyohashi Subic Bay Victoria(BC) Singapore Portland(GBR) Balboa Stornoway Keelung Gibraltar Subic Bay Keelung Den Helder Long Beach Haugesund

Republic of Singapore Spain Japan Philippines Canada Republic of Singapore United Kingdom Panama United Kingdom Taiwan Gibraltar Philippines Taiwan Netherlands United States of America Norway

SAILING DETAILS (or last known location) Sailed Date Port Country

Vessel Name

Built

Best Contact

Flag

Fjordkabel Fresnel Giulio Verne Global Link Havila Skagerrak Heimdal Ile de Batz Ile de Sein KDD Ocean Link KDD Pacific Link Kouki Maru Koushin Maru Leon Thevenin Lodbrog Maersk Defender Maersk Recorder Miss Marie Nordkabel Normand Clipper Oceanic Princess Pacific Guardian Peter Faber Raymond Croze

1985 1997 1983 1991 1976 1983 2001 2001 1992 1993 2000 1998 1983 1985 1996 2000 1998 1969 2001 1984 1984 1982 1983

BULK TRANSPORT FRANCE TELECOM PIRELLI CAVI TRANSOCEANIC CABLE SHIP HAVILA SHIPPING ALCATEL SUBMARINE NETWORKS LOUIS DREYFUS ARMATEURS LOUIS DREYFUS ARMATEURS KOKUSAI CABLE TOKYO LEASE DOKAI TUGBOAT DOKAI TUGBOAT FRANCE TELECOM ALCATEL SUBMARINE NETWORKS MOLLER A.P. MOLLER A.P. COASTLINE MARITIME BULK TRANSPORT SOLSTAD SHIPPING FISHER & SONS GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS TELE DANMARK FRANCE TELECOM

331 6475 10617 13201 7172 10471 13800 13800 9510 7960 9190 4822 4845 10243 5746 6292 3639 395 12100 11121 6133 2854 4845

NORWAY FRANCE ITALY UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NORWAY DENMARK (DIS) FRENCH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY FRENCH ANTARCTIC TERRITORY JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN FRANCE DENMARK (DIS) DENMARK (DIS) DENMARK (DIS) SAINT VINCENT NORWAY NORWAY (NIS) UNITED KINGDOM UNITED KINGDOM DENMARK (DIS) FRANCE 36

29/08/02 17/10/02 15/10/02 14/09/02 25/09/02

04/08/02

25/09/02 14/09/02 28/09/02 09/09/02 14/08/02

30/08/02

Harstad Brest Gibraltar Baltimore Kristiansand Keelung Bermuda Singapore Yokohama Moji Yokohama Moji Brest New York Dover Strait Yokohama Singapore Harstad Bristol Singapore Auckland Korsor Catania

Norway France Gibraltar United States of America Norway Taiwan Bermuda Republic of Singapore Japan Japan Japan Japan France United States of America United Kingdom Japan Republic of Singapore Norway United Kingdom Republic of Singapore New Zealand Denmark Italy

Over 100 ROVs, 355 supporting vessels worldwide, 900 ROV operators, ploughs that can jet down to 1000m, Phoenix ROV that works down to 2500m, UJ and MJ jointers . . . can we be of service?

Submarine Cable Installation and Repair for the Telecommunications and Offshore Industries Smit-Oceaneering Cable Systems 11911 FM529, Houston, Texas 77041-3011, USA 37 Tel +1 713 329 4500 Fax +1 713 329 4805 inquiry@socsys.com

Vessel Name

Built

Sea Spider 1999 Segero 1998 Setouchi Surveyor 1979 Sir Eric Sharp 1989 Skandi Neptun 2001 Teliri 1996 Teneo 1992 Tycom Reliance 2001 Tycom Responder 2001 Wartena 1958 Wave Venture 1982

SAILING DETAILS (or last known location) Sailed Date Port Country

Best Contact

Flag

WAGENBORG SHIPPING KOREA SUBMARINE TELECOM FUGRO GEODETIC GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS DISTRICT OFFSHORE ITALMARE TRANSOCEANIC CABLE SHIP TYCOM RELIANCE TRANSOCEANIC CABLE SHIP KARLSKRONA KOMMUN GLOBAL MARINE SYSTEMS

4008 8323 1264 6141 6318 8345 3051 12130 12130 407 10076

NETHERLANDS PANAMA PANAMA UNITED KINGDOM NORWAY (NIS) ITALY SPAIN (CSR) MARSHALL ISLANDS MARSHALL ISLANDS SWEDEN UNITED KINGDOM

09/10/02

09/10/02 09/10/02

Delfzijl Busan Singapore Bermuda Tees Catania Valencia Long Beach Nagoya Kolobrzeg Singapore

Netherlands Republic of Korea Republic of Singapore Bermuda United Kingdom Italy Spain United States of America Japan Poland Republic of Singapore

In order to provide a more comprehensive information service to our clients, we have entered into an arrangement with www.sea-web.org2/ Lloyd’s Register - Fairplay. LRF maintains comprehensive databases of commercial vessels (www.sea-web.org/), ports and companies (www.portguide.com). In order to qualify for a free trial to either of these services, please contact LRFTrialOffer@SubTelForum.com. 38

S u b s e a

N e t w o r k s

–

L i g h t w a v e s

a r o u n d

t h e

W o r l d

International Submarine Convention March 28 th to April 1 st , 2004

Grimaldi Forum, Principality of Monaco

Make sure to secure your exhibition space, hospitality room and sponsorship

NOW ! www.suboptic.biz on www.suboptic.biz

Submarine Systems Maintenance in Today’s Market

in question, and financing sources have largely deserted the submarine market – for the moment.

Certainty There will be but a handful of new systems installed over the next few years, thus placing an increased demand on incumbent systems to offer secure, reliable, restored and wellmaintained capacity. l Faults will continue to happen, thus placing increased pressure on maintenance contractors to provide a secure and reliable service. l

By Jim Byous I first discussed the concept of an “opex-driven environment” in a submarine symposium presentation this past June, and at that time gave it the working title “Things you can actually do something about now that it’s all gone horribly wrong in the market”. The thrust of this discussion is that in the current market there are few variables on the cost or pricing side which the network owner can control, but the cost of submarine maintenance is one of them, and is coincidentally a cost which is threatening the survival of many network owners, both new and incumbent.

How has the submarine market changed – the Op-ex environment? The current submarine telecom business environment is defined both by uncertainty about the structure and financial foundation of the near-term market, and by certainty that these unknowns will bring new pressures to the industry.

Uncertainty Which of today’s players will be there tomorrow? A concern of both owners and contractors, affecting both parties’ ability to align future strategies through strategic relationships. l The ability of operators to construct a credible business plan is very much l

O&M costs and system economic life In the robust capacity market of years past, undersea maintenance costs were a far less prominent feature of the business model than they are today. As such, the planning and procurement of undersea maintenance was often treated as an after-thought, far overshadowed by the more immediate concerns around the procurement of system supply and installation. Today’s situation, however, couldn’t be more different. Transatlantic capacity pricing

has dropped some 40% per year since 2000 (1) . As the price of capacity has dropped, commensurate with the ample supply along certain routes, the cost of submarine maintenance, and thus the overall O&M cost, has become a key determinant in the ability of the submarine system to survive the current market. The cost of O&M as a percentage of capacity price has risen 277% over this same period. As a component of the O&M costs, submarine system maintenance can account for as much as 90% of the annual O&M budget, depending upon system size, configuration and maintenance plan. Looking at the variables, therefore, which have a significant effect on a system’s ability to survive in the current market, the two most influential factors appear to be capacity price and the submarine maintenance cost. Assuming that the system owner can do little to control market price for capacity (if this was feasible, would we really be in the current mess to begin with?), then logically the one factor over which the owner can have some level of control is the cost of submarine maintenance.

System ‘Economic Life’ To further examine the effects of maintenance cost over the ‘economic life’ of the system, consider that the ‘whole life’ costs of the system typically break down to 50-75%(2) of the cost as front-end CAPEX for design, supply, and construction of the system, and 25-50% in recurring OPEX costs for the ongoing operation and maintenance of the system. Simply put, influence over the submarine maintenance cost may affect as much as 45% of the cost of constructing and operating a system. System economic life is defined here as the point in time when negative cash flow required to operate and maintain the system approaches the positive cash flow generated by system sales. Simply put, when cash out equals cash in, the system is no longer productive. Economic life can thus be shortened or lengthened by either of the above economic drivers. When capacity revenue drops significantly, maintenance costs can thus cause a significant shortening of the economic life of a system, often causing the system financing structure to fail, as has been the case with several notable systems in the past 18 months. 41

Jim Byous has been involved in the submarine cable industry since 1987, and has worked in all aspects of the industry including deep and shallow water system construction, deep cable burial, and system maintenance. Jim currently serves as Director, Americas Region for Global Marine Systems Ltd. In his current role, Jim is responsible for the winning and delivery of all construction and maintenance work in the region.

The bottom line for system owners and maintenance providers is that undersea system maintenance must be offered in a way that is better, faster, and more efficient than ever before. This is the clearest path toward ensured economic viability of new and incumbent systems in the current harsh capacity market environment. (1)

Telegeography 2002

(2)

Goldman Sachs 2002

Optimizing maintenance costs Managing risks The prime driver of maintenance costs is the frequency of repairs, combined with the efficiency of the maintenance response. Even with the newer model of fixed-cost maintenance agreements (unlimited repairs under a fixed standing cost), which Global Marine have undertaken on certain systems, the annual cost is indexed against the expected frequency of fault occurrence. This risk is dependent upon two factors: The aggression threat existing in the region of the cable system (fishery density and techniques, dredging, other seabed users, etc.), and, l The quality of the route planning and installation techniques used to mitigate the above risks.

Proposed Cable Fibre Optic Cable Out of Service Coax Telegraph Cable

Identifying risk – aggression faults It is interesting to note that, with the incumbent systems now carrying more responsibility than ever to provide secure capacity, the external threat to these system cables has never been more abundant. The following data further illustrates a disturbing trend.

82% of all faults occur in less than 200 meters water depth (1997-2000) l 85% of faults arise through ‘external aggression’ l The incidence of external aggression faults has increased 69% between 1986 and 1996 l In this same time, component failure as a cause of faults is down from 17% to 6% of all faults Remarkably, during a period when the construction industry’s combined capability to plan and install shallow water routes has continually grown, the above aggression fault l

statistics show that the continental shelf represents a greater threat than ever. The chart shown above represents one of the key reasons for the increase in the shallow water threat. Simply put, ‘all of the good landings are already taken’. The landing in Singapore, shown above, represents one of the most challenging sites in the world relative to the planning and installation of a secure route. Global Marine have performed every successful system installation into these landings since 1984, and there have been zero aggression faults in any buried section at this landing.

While the hazard at this site is remarkable, it is by no means an exception. Crowded landings such as this exist on every major continent, and as such have forced newer systems to seek new real estate, often along more hazardous sections of the coastline. In addition to the fact that the number of systems occupying seabed in less than 1000 meters of water has dramatically increased, the fishing industry along most coastlines continues to introduce harvesting methods which are more invasive to the seabed and reach into increasingly deeper ocean depths. For anyone who believes that system maintenance is a somewhat sleepy province of the undersea cable industry, consider that, according to our in-house tracking of global maintenance activity, one cable fault occurs every three days. As of this writing, Global Marine alone have performed 45 cable fault repairs in the current calendar year. For the time being, the risk of cable faults is here to stay; it is now up to the undersea maintenance community to work with system owners and planners to manage the threat.

Route Engineering and Installation – A Question of Quality Engineering a system route on the seabed is one of the most often neglected phases of the system construction, as it takes place at the very front end of the construction phase, and involves very little capital commitment. Often, route planning and engineering is incorporated into a supply and installation prime contract, and is subject to the abilities of the system supplier / installer to “get it right”. It is during this phase of the project that the faults a system will experience throughout its service life are actually committed. It is an occasional misconception that a robust maintenance plan will prevent faults; this is not true, they are prevented during the route design. The maintenance plan is in place merely to repair the faults that do happen, as quickly as possible. Chrom a t ic Dispe rsion (ps/ nm )

In some cases the route design criteria, such as armoring or burial techniques, may be limited by the interests of the supplier or installer to achieve cost efficiencies, or to tailor the installation techniques to their own equipment without having to resort to more costly third party methods. This situation can put the route design squarely between the shortterm interests of the supplier and the long-term responsibilities of the system owner. As challenging as it may be to engineer a route to mitigate existing external threats, this is only half the game. A study of all system cables installed in less than 1000 meters water depth between 1996 and 2000 for which fault data was available shows that those installed by Global Marine experienced on average 70% fewer aggression faults than those installed by all other contractors. This study was verified externally for its objectiveness and accuracy. Chroma t ic Dispe rsion (ps/ nm) Lengt h (km)

Lengt h (km ) DSF fibre DCF fibre

DCF fibre

Break

added cable

∆D (ps/nm)

DSF fibre

Clearly this statistic demonstrates that even on a well-engineered route, it is up to the installer to put the cable precisely at the location and depth specified by the route design, and that the owner will end up paying in the long term if this is not achieved.

Changing technology – adding to the maintenance challenge For today’s high-capacity cable systems, design capacity can be many times the initial capacity at installation. One factor limiting the poten-

tial for future upgrades is dispersion, which occurs particularly on high-wavelength, longhaul systems. Over a given span, dispersion occurs due to effects from the fiber material as well as the differing speeds at which the wavelengths travel along the fiber. This error becomes greater over each successive span, and thus must be corrected by inserting a short section of dispersion-compensated fiber (DCF) at regular intervals along the span between repeaters. The quantity of DCF typically runs in the range of 10% of the overall system length.

This sensitive balance of DCF vs. DSF in each span must be carefully maintained under a repair scenario; this means that when a section of either is removed or added to during a repair (picture the amount of cable added into a system to achieve a deep water repair), a precise amount of the other must be added to achieve the precise dispersionmanagement effect required to keep the system in balance. Since the minimization of cable disturbance is key to a repair on such a system, it follows that recovery, jointing and redeployment techniques must be done in a precise, non-invasive manner. Properly maintaining a system containing dispersion-compensated sections requires the capability for the field repair team to accurately calculate and manage the balance between fiber types, as well as to maintain a continual record of such repairs, or a Chromatic Dispersion Map, for each system. Lastly, the maintenance contractor must maintain an adequate and carefully controlled inventory of all fiber types required to carry out repairs on any section of the system, including a plan for quick access to each type of fiber wherever they are within the tanks.

A conflict of interests Facing both the system owner and maintenance provider are thus a set of circumstances, which in the end cooperate to make life a lot harder on both parties: Market economics have: m Raised the burden of network security on the incumbent systems, and, m Lowered the available budget with which to protect these systems. l Aggressive fisheries have led to aggressive cable protection measures, often involving enhanced burial depths. l These protection techniques necessitate more invasive recovery and re-burial techniques during cable repair. l Upgrade capacity of the higher-end systems is very dependent upon less invasive repairs over the life of the system. l Repairs will now have to be done better, faster and cheaper. l

The industry response – raise the quality bar, don’t lower it That which does not kill you will make you stronger The explosive growth the industry has undergone in recent years has stressed the ability

to keep up with the demands on skilled manpower, changes in technology, and, ultimately, quality. Massive advances in transmission technology led to new cable designs and fiber types designed to address the chromatic dispersion effects of the new technology. For Global Marine, the market surge caused dramatic changes: Vessel fleet size was doubled l Number of cable designs in the market jumped from 5 to 29, causing an increase to 613 qualified Universal Joint (UJ) combinations l UJ qualification processes became more complex with the increase of fiber count to nearly 100, and 144 combinations of 52 fiber types l Most of these changes happened within a 30 month time period Additionally, the turnaround time for most of these developments was substantially reduced due to the urgency the industry placed on faster RFS delivery of systems. To be sure, in both the construction and maintenance sectors, mistakes have been made, and quality has occasionally suffered in the face of such growth. The key, however, to providing more efficient maintenance service in the lean years ahead is not to lower quality or service, but l

rather to raise it by addressing any weakness in current processes, and at the same time developing new processes where applicable. The net result is a more efficient service which saves time and money for the customer, and cost for the contractor. The cost of operating a repair ship has not reduced, only the price; therefore, each day at sea had better be used to maximum effect for both parties.

Get it right the first time Through a program called the Continuous Improvement Process, Global Marine are ensuring that the lessons learned through the last few years of record construction and maintenance activity are used to maximum effect in helping to improve our performance and quality of response. The Continuous Improvement Process is a series of targeted initiatives aimed at improving the levels of training and performance of our personnel, and improvement of key processes, which affect the efficiency of our maintenance response. Areas addressed include: l Operational Bulletins – regular communications to the fleet to immediately communicate any operational incident, including causes and lessons learned.

Fleet Technical Group – Senior officers and shoreside personnel are now working alongside each other to ensure that techniques and lessons learned in the field are incorporated l Report 2 Web – an intranet-based database of all lessons-learned, easily searched by topic and incorporating all lessons applicable to that topic

Restructured cable engineering training program, in which all Senior Cable Engineers attend advanced optical transmission training. l Jointer Training and Qualification – trainers are now going shipboard to train teams in the field, and to attend actual repair operations to monitor quality and performance. l

Better, faster, cheaper The key to the above is, simply, excelling at what we do, through improvement of processes or development of new tools. To this end, at a time when most service providers are dramatically trimming services, Global Marine have significantly grown our R&D program, with subsea maintenance a key focus. Some facts about the Global Marine R&D program: l Over 67,000 man-hours are allocated to R&D for 2002. l 14 patent applications in the last 5 years, and 4 in the past year. l 80 new partial roles to be added as fleet and shore staff are seconded to the R&D department on a specialist basis to assist in targeted development programs. 46

Programs targeted by the R&D program: l Non-destructive deep cable recovery technology to ensure minimal cable disturbance during a repair – also ensuring minimal reburial required. l Faster, ‘smarter’ grappling techniques. l Improving burial speed and depth, on both plows and post lay burial ROVs. l Improving lay speeds for construction operations. l Improvement of jointing techniques, focusing on high strength fiber splicing, fiber extraction for tight buffers, and dissimilar fiber splicing. l Development of tools and processes for system Dispersion Management.

The bottom line The message coming from the submarine system owner’s community is loud and clear: the cost of undersea maintenance has now become a matter of survival or liquidation for many systems, large and small, transoceanic and regional. The submarine maintenance

market has now become extremely volatile as operators attempt to restructure their O&M costs through new provider relationships and contractual structures. Gone are the days when the world’s systems were maintained solely by a series of consortium agreements, or maintenance

zones. The market is now populated with a combination of private, private-shared, oncall only and zone agreements, and prices under all of these structures are falling rapidly in response to the needs of the owners. The risk here is that at some point quality and secure response also diminishes, thus putting the owners into a downward spiral of maintenance quality and system security. The only sustainable response from the maintenance provider community must be to improve quality, service and efficiency, evolving our services to become more responsive and cost effective for both parties. There are few things in this market a system owner can control, but maintenance cost is substantial and controllable to a great extent. It is essential that the maintenance contractor community work closely with system owners to protect the physical and financial security of these systems; for without them, we haven’t got much of an industry.

Letter to a friend

from Jean Devos

Dear Bob,

I am writing this letter to you, Bob, on September 11, 2002. Needless to say that my heart is with you. Since this terrible event the world is in poor shape. We have difficulty to see in which environment we are now walking. The road ahead is not too clear. We have lost our lighthouse. We have lost our confidence in the future. I clearly remember, with some emotion now, this beautiful party to which I was invited by AC1, at the very top of the World Trade Center. It was within the second part of 1997, and a gorgeous evening! AC1 was clearly a commercial success, and the plan was to become global, to become Global Crossing. The carriers would not invest anymore in their own network. They would instead enjoy all the advantage of buying capacity at demand, as needed. That was the new gospel; the new paradigm… but there was not a single carrier attending this party! Whoever was raising some question, some doubt, was just swept out as a backward-looking person. That evening, I must say, I came out very impressed, by the entre-

preneurial spirit around; these people had faith in the rightness of their vision, somewhat like the first immigrant convinced that they were building a new world, a better world. The choice of the top floor of the twin tower was adequate! The success of AC1 was not due to an adhesion to the carrier’s carrier new concept. It was due, as often, to a perfect timing. The carriers could not react promptly to the traffic growth they were suddenly enjoying. AC1 gave them the necessary time to plan TAT 14. The reality is that the carriers, for reasons which are both cultural and economical, have never embraced the new model. Capacity is so critical for them! They never reach the point where they could rely on the private cable for their capacity need. Where all the focus was on the new model, the new players, the main carriers have continued to plan their own cable for their own needs. Here is the impressive list of carriers cables which where all planned after AC1, during the time private entrepreneurs were

building other global networks! Columbus 2, Atlantis 2, Americas2, Pan America, TAT 14, China-US, US-Japan, APCN2, Seamewe3, Safe, Sat3, Southern-Cross, Australia-Japan, Apollo. In the same time frame, the technology was delivering a huge capacity step, with the WDM!! The concept on which the carrier’s carrier model was based, was clearly not working, but when launched these things do not stop by themselves!! No one to pull the brake! Only an accident could stop this train, which finally happened. But all this does not give us the clue for the future! The dust has not settled yet and we still do not see clearly the new landscape. The carriers will be key, but they are not healthy and need to learn how to make money out of the data traffic! We need much more time! My dear friend, let’s accept the fact that we are in the dark... in a tunnel... a very long one. Moving forward is the only way which gives us a chance to see the light again.

Jean Devos, Past President of SubOptic, was formerly Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Tyco Submarine Systems Inc., and previously Director, Submarcom and Director Marketing and Projects for Alcatel Submarine Networks.

Smit-Oceaneering Cable Systems 11911 FM529, Houston, Texas 77041-3011, USA 49 Tel +1 713 329 4500 Fax +1 713 329 4805 inquiry@socsys.com inquiry@socsys.com

DIARY

Upcoming Conferences

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