SubTel Forum Issue #68 - SubOptic 2013: From Ocean to Cloud

In This Issue...

SubOptic 2013 from Ocean to Cloud

What an apt title for our next conference to be held in Paris in April 2013. It evokes the pre-eminence of optical fibre submarine cable systems in transporting global information but also the changing nature of demand, in content, availability and access, and supply. The changes in demand come from amongst other things, the ever increasing range of service options and the penetration of high speed broadband access via fibre and 4G mobile. The changes in supply come from changes in network architecture - mesh networks, OTN, and POP to POP provision, new system build and terminal upgrades and perhaps by major changes in the supply industry itself.

What will the industry look like in five years time, will the same number of turnkey system suppliers still be in the market, how will they be organised and how will the Upgrade suppliers, fare. Will the lifetime of systems still be benchmarked at 25 years, or will a well engineered reliable system, installed with the best possible marine protection have a lifespan longer than this. What if the restrictions on upgrading a system are no longer a barrier as they have been in the past? What is the real lifespan of a system?

All the above, covering the major commercial, technical and operational factors influencing our industry - and much more - will be presented and debated at the Eighth SubOptic Conference, the only conference in our industry “organised by the industry for the industry” on a non-profit making basis.

In this edition of Subtelforum, the second I have Guest Edited, I have tried to bring

together a collection of articles, which will act as a sampler for the event itself. Some are controversial, as I hope the conference itself will be, to help further the debates.

Therefore we have articles from GlobeNet giving their view of the Latin American market, from Huawei Marine describing some of the challenges involved in entering the supply market as a full turnkey supplier, and from Verizon outlining in some detail, techniques available to increase fibre and system capacity. These help to demonstrate the range of topics that are uniquely covered at our conference.

We have an article from Colin Anderson, which draws upon his experiences in the industry over the past 20 years and giving a very personal view on how the industry may evolve. This article in particular, I hope will provide some stimulating input to the Roundtable that will be held on the last day of SubOptic 2013, addressing the future shape of the supply industry.

We have a “Letter from a Friend” from Jean Devos”. I have been called brave and foolhardy for publishing this, but the future of SubOptic is very dear to my heart, having attended a number over the past years, including the first one in Versailles in 1986. So far the debate has been carried out mainly in our SubOptic Executive Committee and I personally think it helps us to decide our future by opening the debate to a wider audience and Jean’s item is very much from his heart. He will also present a paper on this theme at the conference itself.

In response I have also contributed an article - the last one – which gives my personal

view on how we might proceed. A pragmatic approach rather than a grand strategic vision, but none the less, one that has a possibility of being implemented.

Underpinning these articles we have a series, from our President - Fiona Beck outlining her experience of presiding over SubOptic for the past 6 years and giving her view of the future; our Programme Chair - Richard Elliott, our Papers Chair - Alice Shelton and Norma Spruce - who has the role in the Host, AlcatelLucent of organising the event, outlining all the elements that come together to make a great event like SubOptic 2013 happen. There is also an item from Linda Evans giving her personal perspective of participating in the Accompanying Persons programme and Paris provides many opportunities for this.

The lasting message I would like to leave is that this is a conference organised by the industry for the industry on a non-profit making basis. It is only possible because many people in the industry are prepared to volunteer to undertake all the activities that differentiate our event from a commercial conference for profit. Provided this support continues there will be many SubOptic conferences to come. The good news is that at the middle of February we had 369 registrations, which is well on course for us to achieve our estimate of approaching 650 -700 attendees.

See you in Paris at SubOptic 2013. Let’s make it truly memorable.

-John Horne

SubOptic: bring Us forward To The future

2013 marks the conclusion of my second term as President of SubOptic. Regrettably this is my last term as your President. Our constitution only permits two terms to be served before the mantle must be handed over to another candidate.

I can’t think of a more beautiful location than Paris in the spring time to hold this important conference. Paris is known as the city of light and it seems appropriate that this city is the venue for an industry event focused on how we can better deliver commerce, information, and entertainment at the speed of light.

It has been a great privilege to be involved with SubOptic, first as a member of the Executive Committee and then as your President. As an industry we have endured a roller coaster ride over the past decade or so – from the dot com collapse in 2000 and 2001 to the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 to the rapid growth in social media and social networking and the development and growth of “the cloud” – it has been quite a ride.

Our industry is now more relevant to the world economy than ever before. Economic and social development in nearly every country around the world leverages off the technology solutions our industry provides. As an industry we now have a greater set of responsibilities to the countries and customers we serve. We are much more than enablers of communication and information sharing

across the globe – we are now a critical component of global economic and social infrastructure. And as a community we need to take these responsibilities very seriously. At the very least we must move in a common direction for the greater benefit of those we serve.

SubOptic is an organization that is set up by the industry and is for the industry. It is a completely voluntary organization and like any voluntary organization it relies on the goodwill and hard work of a number of organizations and people. With that in mind I need to express my heartfelt thanks to Alcatel-Lucent for being the host for this years’ 2013 SubOptic.

The voluntary nature of the organization makes this event, and us as an organization, different. We have no agendas to push, no commercial angles to promote; only the interest of the industry and the wider community that supports it. I urge you to get involved in SubOptic. If you care about your industry and want to contribute to its success then SubOptic needs your involvement.

“SubOptic offers AlcatelLucent a fantastic opportunity to showcase our experience, innovation and expertise to the whole of the submarine network community. Having been part of SubOptic from its early days in Paris, we are proud to see SubOptic come back here and to be hosting this eighth event. I’m sure that the combined attractions of the beautiful city of Paris and the exciting current technological developments and projects of our industry will make this conference a success! “

SubOptic is more than just an organization – it’s a voice for the industry and its participants at all levels. It’s a place where we can debate and communicate and sometimes disagree, or even agree to disagree! It’s also an organization that encourages development and learning in our field and provides a valuable archive of facts and information on our industry and how it has evolved. While many of us here may be competitors there is also something of a collegial nature to our industry. We still want to help each other; not only in times of physical need, for example with restoration on a fault in a

-Leigh Frame Alcatel-Lucent

region, but also in terms of improving the understanding of how we can build the next generation of networks.

So how can you make a difference?

First have a voice in what we do. Tell us what you are looking for from SubOptic. We want to know what you want from us – we are here to meet your needs and to deliver value to you. It is critical we remain relevant and that we constantly challenge ourselves as to who we are and who we could be. A decade ago it would have been hard to imagine the scale of cloud computing, social networking and business applications that now exist as a consequence of the critical infrastructure

we provide. For those of us who are the long time stalwarts in the industry, not only is technology moving to the next realm, but we have a generation of new entrants in our industry. These people are part of “generation e” - they will have very different ways of solving problems and very different visions of our future. We need to ensure their voice is heard in our deliberations.

Second, ensure you are involved in the plan for and the progress of our industry. There are many ways you can contribute to SubOptic. Start by thinking about papers you can write. These need not be academic, technical engineering papers, although we do have many of these and they are very

valuable. You can also document what you think about the industry and where it is going, what pitfalls and opportunities are we creating as an industry, where our risks lie, and what should we be planning for. It is the aggregation of the commercial and technical aspects, the links with the suppliers, operators, consultants, government agencies and end users that makes the whole of SubOptic greater than the sum of its parts.

We also need work on new areas of interest to our members, whether this is a special

“TE SubCom supports SubOptic because it provides an opportunity for the entire industry to come together, share experiences and learn from one another.

By being an EC Member, TE SubCom is demonstrating its commitment to the industry”.

-Dave Coughlan TE SubCom

topic or a working group to develop information that is of interest and benefit to us all.

Other areas include being involved at the Committee level. This involvement could be as an advisor, a referee, on the Programme or Papers Committee or the Executive Committee itself.

I have already expressed my thanks to Alcatel-Lucent for being gracious hosts. I need to emphasize the host does not have an easy time. Working alongside the Executive Committee the host

organization has a lot to do to get ready for this event. In particular, the host needs to be totally committed to the betterment of the industry. And over the years we have been lucky to have hosts that have championed our cause. Alcatel-Lucent, NEC, Fujitsu TE Subcom (Tyco as it was previously known), and KDDI have been the flag bearers for SubOptic. So thank you to those organizations that have risen to the challenge in the past and I welcome the next group of organizations who step forward to carry us beyond 2013.

In closing I would like to emphasize that

broadband has become a necessity for many of us – something we must have for us to conduct our day to day lives at nearly every level. Being part of an industry that delivers the critical infrastructure and services to enable this is both an honor and a privilege. As my term comes to an end and we move to a new era I thank all those who have supported me, the SubOptic organization and the industry.

I look forward to seeing you all at SubOptic 2013. Paris is sure to provide another memorable SubOptic experience.

Ms Beck was appointed President of Sub Optic in 2007. Sub Optic is a not for profit organisation set up to further the interests of the submarine cable industry. Ms Beck is the President and Chief Executive Officer for Southern Cross Cable Network. She was appointed to this position in May 2001. Prior t o Southern Cross Cable Network she represented Telecom NZ as a Director on the Board of Southern Cross Cables and various other major companies such as EDS (NZ) and ConnecTel. Ms Beck was a senior manager within Telecom NZ responsible for Telecom’s corporate planning, EVA analysis, capital investment reviews and corporate advisory service. She is a chartered accountant and holds a Bachelor of Management Studies (Honours) degree in Accounting and Finance from Waikato University, New Zealand.

SubOptic: The Outline Programme

Alittle over two years in the role of programme chairman of Sub Optic 2013 and the finishing line in Paris is coming into view. So what to expect as the industry gathers for its tri annual get together? The theme, Ocean to Cloud draws on the technical and commercial evolution that has taken our industry from the telegraph to the seamless integration represented by cloud services today.

Because you can’t pay to speak at Sub Optic the programme chairman has editorial

freedom that other conference organisers can only dream of. That editorial freedom combined with the high esteem in which Sub Optic is held has made it possible to attract three outstanding keynote speakers. Matt Ridley, author of provocative books on genetics and society will comment on the role of communication in the advance of mankind, Ed Parsons from Google will address the question of who the next billion internet users will be, what they’ll want from the internet and what they might get. Finally Emmanuel Desurvire who invented

the fibre amplifier 25 years ago which has shaped the state of communication today will tell us how it came to be. This world class line up of challenging speakers will tell us something about evolution of communications, each in a very different way.. For those who might question the intellectual indulgence of such sessions as not directly related to the professional challenges we face, fear not.

The tutorials and the poster sessions that have been selected are firmly rooted in the

issues that many of us face from day to day. They cover the leading thinking on the commercial and technical aspects of submarine systems and their integration with other networks; they are the core content.

Then there are the master class tutorials, ten separate presentations on a range of topical issues, and three roundtable sessions at which leading representatives of the industry will look forward and try to predict where the next few years

will lead us and how we as an industry might through coordinated effort and sound leadership direct our efforts most productively.

Alice Shelton, the chairman of the papers committee and I are both extremely grateful for the significant support we have received from those that have participated on the papers and program committees. Endorsement of the programme by the most respected and influential members of our professional community is a pillar

of our confidence in the relevance and quality of the content.

I believe we have an excellent line up of content, roll on Paris in the Spring! Nowhere else could you come even close to being able to learn so much about our industry in a four day programme. I am confident that consideration of our evolution from ocean to cloud will offer a guide to our decision making in determining our way forward.

Prior to joining Apollo full time, Richard was executive chairman of Band-X a company he co-founded in 1997 as a centralised trading exchange for communications capacity. From 1987 to 1997 he was at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson and as a director of the securities division advised institutional and corporate clients on valuation and investment. Of particular note were the financings of COLT, Telewest, Energis, and Orange. This was preceded by three years at the university of Edinburgh and six years service in the British Army. Richard is a Member of the Securities and Investment Institute and a Member of the Institute of Cancer Research.

SubOptic:

Strongly Supported by the Industry

Alice Shelton

As Chairman of the Papers Committee my role has been to work with seven Vice Chairmen in seven topic areas to assemble a Papers Review Committee of industry experts to peer review the submitted Executive Summaries in order to select the papers to be presented either in oral or poster session at the conference in April.

It has been so far a very interesting process and the following few words serve to illustrate the unique nature of the SubOptic conference as the conference that all companies within the industry

continue to be prepared to support with their resource, investment and time.

Call for Papers

The traditional ‘Call for Papers’ for SubOptic 2013 was launched in April 2012 with the request to have Executive Summaries submitted by September 2012.

The Executive Summary, a brief summary of the proposed paper, provides the input on which the submission is reviewed and marked by the Papers Review Committees. Papers were invited to be submitted on any

topic related to the submarine industry, segregated into the following topic areas;

Each Executive Summary is expected to be original in nature and, according to one of SubOptic’s guiding principles, should not include overt product advertising or company publicity.

Executive Summaries are evaluated and scored for quality, credibility, originality, topical relevance and general interest.

Just in time submissions

Having launched the Call for Papers in April, I thought there would be a gradual build up of submissions until close to the deadline and then a late flurry of activity

just before the deadline. This turned out to be widely inaccurate – just two weeks before the deadline and only 20 Abstracts had been received – an anxious moment!

However just two weeks later and we were looking at more than 160 abstracts, clearly the majority are working on Justin-time mode.

In figures, 86% were submitted in the last two weeks and 64% in the last three days!

Another interesting figure is that within the 160+ abstracts, the lead authors came from 75 different companies/organisations, the first indication of the industry interest and support for the SubOptic conference.

Executive Summary Peer review Committees

Meanwhile, in parallel with the process of launching the Call for Papers, I was also assisting the seven selected Vice Chairmen to assemble committees of industry experts in each of the seven topic areas to peer review the submitted Executive Summaries.

Initially I was concerned that assembling the review committees was going to be one of the toughest jobs. We were looking for at least 10 experts in each of the topic areas and we wanted to have representation from across the industry; suppliers, carriers, consultants, specialised component and marine suppliers, lawyers

and representatives from regulatory bodies. We also wanted to cover the industry globally, ensuring participation from all regions, including representatives from regions recently benefitting from new submarine connectivity.

Having identified a list of expert individuals, we then had to persuade them (and their managers) to take time out of their hectic schedules to read 20-40

Executive Summaries as peer reviewers and mark these according to the agreed criteria.

Another surprise. It was never difficult to persuade these busy industry experts to join a review committee. The people that I and the Vice Chairmen asked responded positively almost 100% of the time and we soon had more than 60 people contributing to one of the topic area committees.

A review of the regional and company representation overall highlighted a few missing areas and some actions were taken to address the balance. Again there were never real problems in filling the gaps.

By the time the deadline for the call for papers was reached, the seven review committees were complete and ready to go with 74 reviewers involved overall.

These 74 reviewers came from 41 different companies/associations, again a sure indication of the wide ranging and ongoing support for the SubOptic conference and the willingness to keep the process by which presentations at SubOptic are chosen to be peer reviews by people within the industry rather than by any commercial approach.

Results of the Peer Reviews

The review committees were given guidelines for reviewing the Executive Summaries with the objective of achieving an impartial and fair review. No reviewer was permitted to submit scores for abstracts submitted by their own company.

The guidelines also included a request to highlight any overt commercial content and/or advertising.

Reviews were completed 6 weeks later and there were recommendations for each of the submitted Executive Summaries. Nearly all the possible reviews were completed by the reviewers – close to 98% were completed. This means that more than 1650 individual reviews were done.

Looking at the scoring, out of a possible 5, the scores were wide ranging, from 4.2 to 1.9. Lower scores were obtained where the Executive Summary contained blatant advertising. The highest scores were obtained, not surprisingly, for topical and original ideas.

We had far more requests for oral presentation than we could accommodate so around 30% of oral requests needed to be considered for poster presentation or dropped. Overall we were determined not to take abstracts that scored particularly

badly in order to keep up the standard to which SubOptic is accustomed.

Finally after a lot of review and some moving of papers between topic areas where they were submitted in the wrong topic areas, we ended up with a workable list of papers. Letters went out to all authors on 3rd December. All authors except 2 responded positively and accepted the outcome.

Once the list was confirmed the next task was to fit the oral presentations into

sessions for the preliminary programme. This can be found at www.suboptic.org.uk

Still to Go

Still quite a bit of work to go before April; the full papers will be submitted this month and the Vice Chairmen have the task of verifying the content of the paper is in line with the accepted Executive Summary and that the SubOptic guidelines are being followed. Once this is complete the oral and poster presentations will be worked on for presentation at the conference itself.

However I anticipate these tasks will be as stimulating and enjoyable as the work done so far!

I would like to record my many thanks to the Vice Chairmen for coordinating the recommendations in each topic area and for their ongoing support in setting up the oral and poster presentations sessions. I am also very grateful for the support from Richard Elliott, the Chairman of the Programme Committee and to John Horne for his invaluable experience and guidance.

I look forward to seeing you in Paris in April.

Alice is currently Technical Area Marketing Manager for Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks. Before joining the ASN marketing team in 2010, she was the technical project manager for the development of the ASN 1620 Light Manager SLTE, leading the project through the implementation phase of several successful releases, culminating in the introduction of 40G coherent technology. She started her career as a design engineer in submarine systems at STC in the UK in 1989, just after the first fibre optic transatlantic system, TAT-8, went into service and has since been involved in the introduction of several new generations of submarine systems. Before joining STC she designed active infra-red proximity fuses for surface to air missiles.

Alice is a Physics graduate from Durham University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), now the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). She has attended all the SubOptic conferences since 1997, actively contributing to the programme as an author and presenter of papers and posters on SLTE technology research and development.

April In Paris

Norma Spruce

When it was announced in Yokohama in 2010 that AlcatelLucent would be the host of SubOptic 2013, the next conference seemed a long way away. We had plenty of time to arrange a 3-day conference. But how time flies - the conference opening date is now less than 3 months away and the activity level is increasing daily.

From the start, we knew the conference would be held in Europe but the actual location took some time to finalize. Our aim was to choose a place that was easy to get to from anywhere in the world and a conference and hotel complex that could

be transformed into the SubOptic village for four days. We were also aware that we had to design and deliver a conference with a break-even target against a backdrop of challenging global economic conditions and limited budgets. After several months of brainstorming, discussions and surveys of possible venues in Europe, it was decided that SubOptic 2013 would be held in Paris, France. This time we will be in the centre of Paris not Versailles, where the first two SubOptic conferences were held over 20 years ago. There will be some delegates at 2013 that have fond memories of these early events and we hope they are looking forward to coming back to Paris.

Paris is often called La Ville-Lumière – City of Light. There are various interpretations of the origin of the description. One suggestion is that the since the Middle Ages Paris has been a centre for education and ideas; another that Paris was an early adopter of street lighting thanks to Baron Haussmann, who was appointed by Napoleon III to transform and modernise Paris in the mid-1860s. Whatever the origins of the description, the themes of light, education and enlightenment, transformation and modernisation are all relevant to SubOptic. So Paris is a very appropriate venue for the SubOptic 2013 conference.

Our industry is transforming. We are still at a relatively low point in the supply market. The global economic crisis that was the background to the 2010 conference continues but interest and investment in submarine cables remains strong. An upside of the difficult market conditions we are all facing is that we look for cost-effective solutions to meet our customers’ needs and this in turn drives creativity and innovation. As a supplier, we see a consistent appetite for large scale projects from the investment community. SubOptic 2013, as the event organised by the industry for the industry, attracts delegates representing the whole range of interested parties and is, consequently, the ideal place to discuss and promote such projects to the wider community.

We are fortunate to be able to reference and learn from the success of the last two SubOptic conferences in Baltimore and Yokohama. At one of the early planning meetings one of the previous hosts gave me some succinct and good advice - Get some help. And they were right. We selected a Paris-based company, Le Public Système (LPS), to plan and manage the conference. LPS have a wide experience in event management and have worked on many large scale conferences and exhibitions in Europe. Over the past year, they have been busy selling sponsorships and exhibition space, setting up the registration tool and negotiating contracts for the many different services and products that are needed for a successful conference.

SubOptic 2013 will take place in the Marriott Rive Gauche conference centre which has an integrated hotel. It is the first hotel centre to become certified ISO 14001 for its eco-friendly and sustainable development policy. The combined conference and accommodation facilities of the hotel gives us the opportunity to create an intimate and efficient environment, where delegates can network, exchange views and ideas with their industry peers and colleagues and make new contacts. Being in the same hotel minimises the time spent daily on travelling to and from the conference and allows business and social activities to mix comfortably. Yet if you need a break from the conference, it is easy to step outside the door of the hotel and

escape to explore Paris, a capital city full of charm, culture, history and, of course, great food and wine.

As well as its charm, Paris was chosen because it is a good transport hub for visitors from all over of the world and the European Union has good visa friendly arrangements with most countries, which should make delegates’ travel to France easy. The Marriot Rive Gauche Hotel is easily accessible by public transport; the RER (Paris Regional Rail Network) from the two main Paris airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly, and also from the Gare du Nord, one of the main railway stations. It is also only a few stops on the Metro to the Eiffel Tower and the city centre.

Paris also provides a marvellous centre for a wide range of activities for accompanying persons, from visits to superb museums and historic buildings such as the Louvre, Eiffel Tower and Versailles to shopping on the Champs Elysées, cookery classes and cruises and walks along the banks of the river Seine. Take a look at the Accompanying Partner Programme which includes a range of daily activities to discover or rediscover Paris. For the more adventurous, the Normandy coast and Champagne regions are about a three hours’ drive away.

With the preliminary programme published, we are now finalising the conference spaces to showcase the plenary sessions, master class tutorials, round tables, workshops and paper presentations. We have allocated a large space adjacent to the exhibition area for the popular Poster Session. Feedback from past conferences shows that this one of the highlights of SubOptic and this will continue in 2013. The inclusion of an afternoon tea/cocktail bar should help to create a vibrant and open atmosphere where delegates can interact with the poster authors.

It is a privilege for Alcatel-Lucent to be the host of SubOptic in our home city. We are looking forward to welcoming delegates to Paris to combine business and pleasure - to see the best of the submarine industry and to see and enjoy Paris at its best in the springtime.

Some useful links for Paris and SubOptic 2013:

Paris Tourist Office

French Tourist Office

SubOptic 2013 registration website

Norma leads the marketing communications team in Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks. Prior to taking on this role in 2011, Norma was Customer Support Director for Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks managing after sales services including warranty management and operations and maintenance support for submarine networks customers.

Norma has worked for many years in the submarine networks business community. Before joining ASN in 1999, she worked in various commercial and project management roles for international telecommunications companies based in the UK. Norma holds a MBAin International Business from City University, London and BA Hons in geography from the University of Liverpool.

What Is It The Song Says? Linda evans

Springtime in Paris; how romantic, what better way to experience Paris than to participate in the wonderful accompanying partner/spouse activities planned for SubOptic 2013 hosted by Alcatel-Lucent.

It has been always a wonderful experience to have the opportunity to accompany my husband, Graham attending the various submarine telecommunications conferences around the world; and none can possibly surpass SubOptic; colloquially referred to as the submarine telecommunication’s industry’s Olympics, although now occurring every three years rather than four. I am also fortunate, as a freelance artist, to

have the freedom to travel whenever I can to accompany him.

As Helen Veverka wrote in her piece before SubOptic 2010, we, as the partners or wives of delegates have the opportunity to attend the various social activities that are part of the submarine telecommunications community culture. This is particularly so for SubOptic where the events not only include a specifically designed program of activities for accompanying partners and spouses; it also includes the traditional and rather grand Gala dinners where each successive SubOptic host tries to surpass their predecessor. Attending SubOptic provides a wonderful opportunity at each

venue to visit interesting places and to meet up with delegate’s partners or wives and renew old friendships.

I have been fortunate to have attended three SubOptic conferences as a partner. My first SubOptic was in 1997 in San Francisco which was a wonderful experience. The partners and wives programs were to visit historical places in San Francisco. I did not join all of them, but the opening reception was held at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor located in Lincoln Park and organized by AT&T. The place was surrounded or decorated with priceless arts that I never dreamt of seeing in

my life. As usual the Sub Optic dinner is about the free flow champagne and food, and it was fabulous.

The second opportunity I had was to be able to attend Suboptic in Kyoto, where the partners or wives were taken to have an education in Japanese Culture. We attended a Tea Ceremony, Ikebana (flowers Arrangement) and Geisha Kimono fashion Show as well as of course opportunities to do some shopping. I have learned and applied the Ikebana course in my day today life in arranging flowers. It was very useful and beneficial for me as I love arranging flowers.

The third Sub Optic I had the opportunity to accompany my husband too was in Yokohama during 2010, it was not pleasant for me, as I was not able to see properly for a couple days due to a serious eye problem that flared up only one week before the event. As Helen explained and wrote however, the experience to meet wonderful people during many years attending the conference as a partner or wife was truly amazing. Clients and strangers become my friends during this difficult time and for a couple days these friends took care of me and helped me to walk around. Yokohama was a very memorable experience for me and I was blessed to be able to meet wonderful people who were really nice and genuine to me.

I truly value the lasting friendships that I developed during the Sub Optic conferences. Until Kyoto I had never seen a Sumo wrestler in my live and never dreamt to meet one close up. Wow, it was really amazing to learn of their life experience and to improve my cultural knowledge about Japan.

The next one we will have the opportunity to go will be, Paris, voila. Nous allons a Paris. See you all there. I heard the spouse programs, which is outlined within this edition, will be wonderful and exciting, I can’t wait.

Accompanying Persons Programme

We have planned a selection of visits and activities to cater for all tastes.

The cost of these activities is not included in the registration fee. Prices will be available on the SubOptic registration page at www.suboptic.org. Activities and tours may be cancelled if the number of participants fails to reach the minimum required.

TuESDAY AM:

City of Love

The secrets of the Eiffel Tower

You will be given a special tour of the Eiffel Tower where you will discover and explore its wonderful secrets through stories and facts. You will also be provided with backstage access to this remarkable monument, where you will enter through the old bunker under the “Champ de Mars” leading you into its astonishing original machine room which still controls the lifts to this day. In addition you will have the opportunity to enjoy a stunning view on the 2nd level before going up to the prestigious roof restaurant “Le Jules Verne” to discover new panorama of Paris.

TuESDAY PM:

Bon Appetit!

Cooking class with a famous French chef

Come and discover the famous French kitchen chefs’ school. This modern and friendly space of 700 m² is composed of 4 kitchen « living rooms », a tasting wine cellar and a corner shop. Courses are given by chefs trained by Alain Ducasse, who will share with you their recipes and magical techniques … Learn all the tricks of famous chefs and how to make delicious macaroons. On completing this course, you will be able to taste your beautiful creations.

WEDNESDAY AM:

Versailles

Royal escapade

Ranked for over 30 years as a uNESCO World site, the Château de Versailles represents the French classic art. Symbol of royal power, Versailles is also renowned for its beautiful gardens, equally as important as the castle in the eyes of Louis XIV, whose work lasted for forty years. You will discover more than 30 pools including the famous Neptune Fountain, the Apollon’s Pool and the Latona Basin, including water jets as well as the 50 fountains in the garden which provide a magnificent spectacle of the Fountains of Versailles.

WEDNESDAY PM:

Teatime- Chocolate initiation in the mythical French house: La Duree...

An expert will invite you to share a journey through Central America, the Caribbean and in Africa, searching for the origin of chocolate. You will hear about the history of cacao, starting from the Olmecs in Mexico up to the present day. You will taste famous cocoa beans before being initiated into the mysterious development of the real fundamental flavours of chocolate

Finally, you will discover the different aromas of chocolate and appreciate the chocolate collection of LA DuREE. Welcome to the temple of delights!

THuRSDAY AM:

Da Vinci Code

The Louvre Museum

Discover the largest museum in Paris gathering historical pieces, including the world famous Mona Lisa. From the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean to the first half of the 19th century, the Louvre Museum has an impressive collection which will delight all art lovers.

Located in the heart of Paris, between the right bank of the Seine and Rue de Rivoli, this iconic museum houses varied, cosmopolitan and timeless collections. You will also discover the glass Pyramid of Ming Pei in the centre of the Napoleon courtyard commissioned by President Francois Mitterrand in 1983.

THuRSDAY PM:

Tour of Paris in the authentic Citron 2 CV

Experience Paris in its much beloved Citron 2 CV car, which is as iconic as the baguette or the Eiffel Tower. Perfect for lovers or people in search of an unusual or different tourist experience, we will provide a driver who will let you “experience” all the secrets of Paris during the hour and a half trip. All along the route, you will decide where you want to stop to stroll for a few minutes and take pictures.

NB: We recommend 2 persons per car- maximum 3 persons.

Eiffel Tower © Paris Tourist Office Photographer Jacques Lebar

© Paris Tourist OfficePhotographer Amélie Dupont Musée du Louvre

Statistics

SubOptic: Sponsors and exhibitors

SEA TALK

The Atlantic Cable Maintenance & Repair Agreement (ACMA) was founded in 1965 and is a non-profit cooperative subsea maintenance agreement consisting of 60+ members from the telecoms, oil and gas and power cables sector with cables located in the Atlantic, North Sea and Southeastern Pacific Ocean.

ACMA members benefit from a high quality, with best in class KPIs, and is a cost effective cable maintenance repair and improvement solution for their cables, provided by a world-class fleet of ships and ROVs.

With dedicated facilities, and additional services being provided such as depots for the storage of spare plant with optional services such as charting, land cable repairs and cable protection and fisheries liaison, ACMA truly does provide a market-leading service for all your subsea cable maintenance requirements.

Visit us at www.acmarepair.com

Alasdair Wilkie (alasdair.wilkie@ hiberniaatlantic.com), ACMA Chairman, will be attending SubOptic and would welcome any questions or inquiries regarding ACMA.

Australia Japan Cable operates a multiaward winning submarine cable network linking Australia to the rapidly expanding Internet and data world.

Demand for high quality international bandwidth from Australia is growing at an unprecedented rate. In order to provide customers with an unparalleled combination of speed, quality and value, Australia Japan Cable offers high speed submarine optical fibre capacity between Australia and Japan, with additional connectivity in Guam.

In the Northern Hemisphere, high capacity, low cost information super-highways link North America, Asia and Europe. Australia is directly connected to these information super-highways via the 12,700 km Australia Japan Cable network along a proven historically safe route. Renowned for its operational excellence since inception, Australia Japan Cable’s current potential Design Capacity of 1280+1280Gb/s makes it one of Australia’s largest links in the growing global e-economy. Our network architecture, combined with the latest technology, ensures we meet customer demands for voice, high speed data and multimedia service capacity at competitive prices.

www.ajcable.com

The long-trusted partner of service providers, enterprises and governments around the world, Alcatel-Lucent is a leading innovator in the field of networking and communications technology, products and services. The company is home to Bell Labs, one of the world's foremost research centers, responsible for breakthroughs that have shaped the networking and communications industry. Leveraging over 150 years of experience in the submarine business, Alcatel-Lucent leads the industry in terms of capacity and installed based with over 500,000 km of submarine networks deployed. From network upgrades to new deployments, from regional to transcontinental networks, Alcatel-Lucent provides every part of a global transmission network, all tailored to its customers’ needs. A comprehensive service portfolio completes its turnkey offering for the submarine business, including project management, installation and commissioning and marine operations and maintenance performed by its fleet of seven cable ships.

For more information, visit Alcatel-Lucent on: www.alcatel-lucent.com, read the latest posts on the Alcatel-Lucent blog www. alcatel-lucent.com/blog and follow the Company on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ Alcatel_Lucent.

Apollo is the world's most advanced transatlantic submarine fibre optic cable system running from London to New York and Paris to Washington D.C.

The Apollo system has the greatest design capacity of any system in the Atlantic.

Apollo incorporates four fibre pairs throughout its 13,000 km length and provides data transmission at 10Gbit/s through Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and offers a variety of wavelength products including the latest Ethernet services. The unique engineering of Apollo allows an ultimate capacity of at least 3.2 Tbit/s. It comprises of two fully diverse submarine cables with four fibre pairs in each. Each fibre pair is capable of being upgraded to at least 80x10Gbit/s wavelengths.

The network is owned by Apollo Submarine Cable System Limited, a UK based company jointly owned by Cable & Wireless (www.cw.com) and Alcatel-Lucent (www.alcatel-lucent.com).

The Apollo cable system was completed in 2003. During the planning, design, construction and commissioning of the system, Cable &Wireless' unrivalled knowledge of the submarine cable business and Alcatel-Lucent's leading edge technology

were brought together to create the world's most advanced transatlantic cable system.

The Apollo Cable System is operated and managed by Apollo Submarine Cable System Ltd, a joint venture company based in Covent Garden, London, WC2.

www.apollo-scs.com

Being a sponsor of SubOptic allows Ciena to meet with the various industry players from around the world in one venue to better understand the dynamics of the fast-changing global telecom industry. It also gives us an opportunity to share some of our latest developments and successes in submarine networking.

Discovery Semiconductors, Inc. is an industry leader in manufacturing ultrafast, high optical power handling InGaAs photodetectors, optical receivers, balanced optical receivers and several custom products for applications ranging from analog RF links to ultrafast digital communications. Discovery began in 1993 and has grown into a global enterprise by leading the market with hightechnology products for 10, 40, and 100 Gb applications. Discovery’s Lab Buddy instrumentation line includes the HLPD® and Optical Coherent Receiver.

The EGS Survey Group provides innovative engineering geophysical, oceanographic and environmental survey services to the submarine telecommunication, power and pipeline industries worldwide. Specialising in supporting the submarine telecommunications industry; EGS has carried out more than 400,000 route kilometres of survey from across rivers to across the world’s oceans.

EGS offers full cable route planning and engineering capability including:

• Feasibility studies and provisional route planning and selection

• Pre survey Pipeline and Cable Route Studies and Route Engineering

• Design of route survey specifications and procedures

• Route survey and burial assessment

• Final route engineering

www.egssurvey.com

E-marine PJSC, an ISO certified Company, is one of the market leaders in Submarine Cable Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Services. E-marine offers its services in the field of Marine Project Management, Consultancy, Marine Route Survey, Cable Freight Management & Storage, and Chartering. Besides Telecommunication field, E-marine provides complete range of solutions to the offshore industry.

E-marine’s beginning was in early 1984, and now over 25 years of track record, it has successfully completed various projects of national and international importance.

E-marine owns three Cable Ships and one Special Purpose Cable laying support vessel which are fully equipped with stateof-the-art equipments. CS Etisalat is a medium sized cable ship which is designed to operate on shallow areas. CS Niwa, a DP II vessel and CS Umm Al Anber are Ocean going ships with extended endurance in the sea. All our vessels are fitted with working class ROV’s. “SPV WASEL” is designed to perform work such as shore end diving support & Survey activities and cable laying & Repair on depth of half a meter.

E-marine’s Cable Depots (Port of Salalah, Oman & Hamriyah Free Zone, Sharjah, UAE.) provide sophisticated storage facilities for submarine cables and accessories in a controlled environment in accordance with highest international standards. The depots are equipped with testing and jointing facilities operated by highly qualified professionals. E-marine’s storage facilities meet the high industrial standards.

E-marine has a highly qualified and motivated technical team to provide customized solutions locally, regionally, and globally to our valued customers.

E-marine’s total commitment for quality is evidenced with the obtainment of an integrated quality, Health, Safety, and Environment Management System. It is certified to ISM code, ISO 9001-2000, ISO 14001:2004, and OHSAS 18001:1999. The strategic location of E-marine’s facilities as well as its customized solutions and highly competent professionals makes Emarine the leader in the region for submarine cable related services.

www.emarine.ae

France Telecom is one of the world's leading telecommunications carriers, with more than 126 million customers on the five continents (220 countries and territories) at March 31, 2005 and consolidated revenues of 46.16 billion euros for 2004 (under IFRS GAAP). For the Q1 2005, consolidated revenues totaled 11.62 billion euros (under IFRS GAAP). Through its major international brands, including Orange, Wanadoo, Equant and GlobeCast, France Telecom provides businesses, consumers and other carriers with a complete portfolio of solutions that spans local, long-distance and international telephony, wireless, Internet, multimedia, data, broadcast. France Telecom is the second-largest wireless operator and Internet access provider in Europe, and a world leader in telecommunications solutions for multinational corporations. France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) is listed on the Paris and New York stock exchanges.

www.francetelecom.com/wholesalesolutions

Fugro is a leading service provider for the collection and interpretation of data relating to the earth’s surface and subsurface in support of infrastructure development on land, along the coast and on the seabed. For over 25 years, Fugro has specialized in the field of submarine cable desktop studies and route surveys and has provided these services for the vast majority of cables installed today. Fugro is able to leverage significant savings over the lifetime of a network by providing leading services in marine route planning, site investigations and complete survey solutions for clients worldwide.

Fujitsu is a leading provider of customerfocused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting device technologies, highly reliable computing and communications products, and a worldwide corps of systems and services experts uniquely position Fujitsu to deliver comprehensive solutions that open up infinite possibilities for its customers' success. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu

Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 5.1 trillion yen (US$43.2 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2007.

In the submarine cable industry, Fujitsu is one of the most experienced players in the world. In 1969, Fujitsu developed the very first Japanese coaxial submarine cable system, and since then, Fujitsu has installed more than 70 submarine cable systems around the globe. Fujitsu provides planning, design, installation, commissioning, and project management services to complete full-turn-key projects of any size, on time and to the full satisfaction of our customers.Fujitsu is also a leading supplier for systems upgrade projects with highly reliable technologies and excellent engineering performance.

Fujitsu Limited: http://www.fujitsu.com/ global/services/telecom/

Submarine Networks: http://www.fujitsu.com/globa l/services/telecom/solution/submarine

A global “Carrier’s Carrier,” GlobeNet offers high capacity, international wholesale data solutions. GlobeNet operates a 22,500 kilometer fiber-optic, dual-ring protected subsea cable system, serving Brazil, Bermuda, Colombia, Venezuela, and the US. GlobeNet’s network system is fully redundant via ring typology, and offers the lowest latency routes between the Americas.

GlobeNet’s services include International Private Line, Carrier Ethernet, Wavelength Services, IP Transit, colocation at cable landing stations, and more. The company’s award-winning network architecture is based on the latest SDH, Carrier Ethernet, and DWDM technologies, with availability measured in excess of 99.99%.

The company has been notably recognized, earning the Global Telecoms Business’ Award for Wholesale Service Innovation; Best Company and Hot Product Award, Latin American Category for the Network Products Guide; and Best Latin American Wholesale Offering award by Capacity Magazine. GlobeNet’s COO Erick Contag also earned the Global Telecoms Business Power 100 award in 2011.

For more information on GlobeNet, visit www.globenet.net.

Hengtong Corporation is one of world’s competitive providers of comprehensive wire and cable solutions, focusing on satisfying the diverse needs of global customers. Headquartered in Suzhou, China, Hengtong Corporation reported consolidated revenues of US $35 billion in the fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2011.

Hengtong Optic-electric (SSE: 600487) optical fiber cable for cross –river and subsea use has exceeded 6,000 km in total The submarine cable qualification test by UJ&UQJ and submarine test are under way. Hengtong Optic-electric is rising as a new player of international submarine optic fiber cable manufacturer. And we have abundant confidence in providing highly-reliable, high quality and diverse submarine optical fiber cables and the accessories to the global customer base of submarine optic communication system.

established in late 2008, Huawei Marine has strived for sustainable growth and long-term value in the submarine industry with support from the parent companies and the continued investment in R&D of both wet and dry plant. During the initial years, Huawei Marine has been active in the upgrade market using its state of the art SLTE, and steadily supplied 9 turnkey submarine cables, spread in Asian-Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa.

Huawei Marine, as the freshest blood and one of most active members in the industry, would like to support SubOptic2013 as we did at SubOptic2010. This time we will bring the most state-of-the-art technology and our latest wet-plant products and solutions there, to share our thoughts, and most important to listen the voices most directly and exhaustive from the industry. All for one purpose-to better service our customers.

submarine cable industry, including cable ship operators and survey companies. ICPC currently has 130 members representing over 60 nations, which cover the almost all of the international submarine cables. The principal purpose of the ICPC is promoting the safeguarding of submarine cables against man-made or natural hazards and compliance with UNCLOS. The ICPC also serves as a forum for the exchange of technical, environmental, security and legal information pertaining to submarine cable protection methods and programs.

ICPC members cooperate closely with the fishing, dredging, hydrocarbon, and other offshore industries that use the seabed.

The website address is: www.iscpc.org

Huawei Marine provides highly reliable, cost-effective solutions and end-to-end services including project management, installation, and technical support for submarine cable system operators. Since

The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), which is a not-for-profit organisation, was founded in 1958 and its membership comprises governmentowned administrations and commercial companies that own or operate submarine telecommunications or power cables, and companies that have an interest in the

Infinera builds communication systems that serve as key building blocks for telecom service providers. These systems transport network traffic on optical fiber between metropolitan, regional, national and trans-oceanic geographies. Infinera solutions introduce disruptive innovations in many different dimensions, resulting in strategic competitive advantages to its customers. It is differentiated by in-house component development of largescale Photonic Integrated Circuits (PIC) and experience in building carrier-class systems since inception, resulting in highly scalable, efficient, simple and reliable solutions. Infinera

estimates that around 40% of the world’s internet traffic is carried via the 600,000 kms of fiber lit using its systems. www.infinera.com

Makai Ocean Engineering offers a suite of software products that greatly improves the speed and reliability of submarine cable installations, including cable route planning, installation planning, simulation, and operator training, as well as at-sea real-time control of cable laying and retrieval. Founded 40 years ago in Hawaii, USA, Makai’s comprehensive suite of software packages are designed to reduce risk and provide quality control throughout the subsea cable deployment process. Our software has been used to deploy over 400,000km of submarine cable around the world.

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies

meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. In the submarine cable telecommunication industry, NEC is among the world leaders for its innovative technologies and excellent track records, having successfully completed many of the world's most important cable systems. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society.

For more information, visit NEC at >www. nec.com (Corporate) www.nec.com/submarine (Submarine Networks).

Nexans Norway AS is a leading supplier of power, telecommunications, installations and heating cables in Norway, and is among the world's leading manufacturers of offshore control cables and high-voltage submarine cables. The company's head office is in Oslo, and it has manufacturing plants at Rognan, Namsos, Langhus, Karmøy and Halden. From the manufacturing plant at Rognan, with a deep-water quay, we produce the submarine fibre optical URC-1 cables, which are used for connecting networks worldwide. Most of the oil platforms in the world that have a fiber optical connection have a robust Nexans cable as the umbilical to the world!

General Cable Corporation (NYSE:BGC), a Fortune 500 Company, is a global leader in the development, design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of copper, aluminum and fiber optic wire and cable products for the energy, industrial, and communications markets.

With sales of over 4.5 billion euros, 47 manufacturing locations and over 11,900 employees worldwide, General Cable Corporation, a company in constant expansion and development, comprises General Cable North America, General Cable Europe & Med, and the Rest of the World.

Its Nordenham facility in Germany forms General Cable’s global competence center for submarine cable solutions. Founded in 1899, NSW installed its first significant submarine telecommunication cable of approximately 7,993 kilometers in 1904. With its repeatered and unrepeatered NSW® MINISUB® Submarine Cable Systems, NSW offers the complete range of services from design over production and installation.

NSW and its more than 500 employees advise and support customers all over the world.

www.generalcable.com www.nsw.com

Makai Ocean Engineering

Optic Marine Services International Limited (OMS) provides total and integrated solutions for submarine cable installation projects. Our services range from Shore End Fibre Optic and Power Cable Installation and Maintenance, Project Management, Permits Acquisition, Marine Agency and Logistics Consultancy, Cable Transfers, Cable Landing, and Outside Plant Construction. To date, OMS has participated in numerous projects in Asia stretching from the Middle East, Indian continent and all across Asia Pacific.

For the first time in Suboptic 2013, OMS will be sharing its rich experience and knowledge in permitting across Asia Pacific in a paper will be presented by Mr Ronnie Lim (CEO). At the same time, OMS will be having an exhibition booth to showcase our equipment, tools and expertise in undertaking shallow water installation work for submarine optic fiber and power cables.

Pioneer Consulting offers a comprehensive set of services for the submarine fiber optic telecommunication system industry from: system engineering to market analysis, from feasibility study to RFQ, from desk top study to project management. Based out of Boston, Massachusetts, USA, Pioneer Consulting has provided market research and advisory/consultancy services internationally for more than fifteen years. Pioneer Consulting is led by three managing partners, who have collectively 80+ years’ experience working within the telecommunications industry including: carriers and turnkey submarine cable system suppliers.

Southern Cross Cable Network is a leading Australasian supplier of international capacity to Carriers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Australia and New

Zealand. Southern Cross owns and operates a diverse and redundant Trans-Pacific submarine cable network connecting Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii to the internet backbone on the United States West Coast providing carrier neutral services to Carriers, Internet and Content Service Providers and Corporations.

Southern Cross is run by a team of highly skilled management and technical people that pride themselves on delivering market relevant products and solutions, and have over 100 years of experience in the international telecommunications community. Southern Cross has current lit capacity of 2Tbps with a current potential exceeding 7Tbps.

Southern Cross an independent entity with a head office based in Bermuda and offices in Wellington and Auckland, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia.

www.southerncrosscables.com

Submarine Telecoms Forum is the submarine cable industry’s first electronic, dedicated magazine, RSS Feed, and podcast, and the platform for discourse on submarine telecom cable and network operations, and our authors and advertisers enjoy unequaled market visibility. SubTel Forum is free to its 50,000+ readers in 110 countries. www.subtelforum.com

A Furukawa Company

TE SubCom, a TE Connectivity Ltd. company, is an industry pioneer in undersea communications technology and marine services and a leading global supplier for today’s undersea communications requirements. Drawing on its heritage of technical innovation and industry recognized performance, TE SubCom delivers the most reliable, high quality solutions to organizations with undersea communications needs vital to their core mission. The company designs, manufactures and installs systems around the world, and has deployed more than 490,000km of subsea communication cable—or enough to circle the earth more than 12 times at the equator.

TE SubCom’s global presence, backed by industry leading research and development laboratories, manufacturing facilities, installation and maintenance ships, depots, and management team work together to implement integrated solutions and network upgrades, with unsurpassed reliability, that support the

needs of telecommunications, internet providers, offshore and science customers worldwide. For more information visit www.SubCom.com.

Submarine Optical Fiber Cables- both for unrepeatered systems and repeatered systems .ZTT cable provides following solutions for telecommunication customers

Unrepeatered and repeated cable systems (UQJ & UJ qualified)

Installation supervision services

www.zttcable.com

Email: international@zttcable.com

Some Thought’s from Our Sponsors and exhibitors On The Value Of SubOptic

Being a sponsor of SubOptic allows Ciena to meet with the various industry players from around the world in one venue to better understand the dynamics of the fast-changing global telecom industry. It also gives us an opportunity to share some of our latest developments and successes in submarine networking.

Masamichi Miyazaki, Senior Manager Fujitsu: SubOptic is really a unique and precious function of, and by, and for the industry, where most of the world key players in the submarine telecom industry participate. No doubt, the opportunity of sponsorship and exhibition there is extremely valuable to us in terms of effectively showing them our activities, technologies and the way to shape our future in one place. We are always satisfied with this well prepared function and opportunity.

Suboptic 2013, the gate of Hengtong’s entry into the subsea optic world!

Salon Ma, Marketing Director of Huawei Marine: SubOptic, the most august event of the entire Submarine industry, not only

brings together from both the buyer and the seller of the experienced players, the technical experts, but also from the world of the academic experts, senior consultant etc. People are gathering together to share, and to learn. In such an open environment, people’s thoughts exchange quickly, new ideas will be generated. It is exactly the way that brings progress to individual, even to the whole industry, which is also the greatest significance of SubOptic!

Dr. Jose Andres, CEO and President of Makai Ocean Engineering, Inc: Since Makai is located in Hawaii, USA, we are a long distance from many of our clients and so SubOptics has always provided an invaluable place for meeting our clients face to face, discovering the latest in cable technology, and showcasing our latest cable deployment software.

Mr Soon Foo Lim Chairman Optic Marine:

After being in this business for the last 38 years, I will be handing over the reign to a younger, more dynamic and knowledgeable generation to address the ever-changing territorial water lineage imposed by various countries. Our

extensive involvement in shallow water, maintenance, project management will be beneficial to many system suppliers and telco owners participating in SubOptic 2013.”

Keith Schofield, Managing Partner, Pioneer Consulting: Pioneer is once again sponsoring and participating in SubOptic 2013—the industry’s prime triennial meeting point. We will be moderating the ‘Pirates, Poison and Politics’ Masterclass and we look forward to seeing you there to learn of the critical challenges facing marine operators, installers and maintainers converting ideas from the cloud to cable systems in the ocean.”

Mr Simon Senior Manager is appreciative of Suboptic 2013 as ‘a good opportunity to showcase our company ZTT to the submarine network industry’

Reflections from The Subsea Tar Pit

Colin Anderson

In this article I provide some personal reflections on the supply-side of the industry over the past 20 years, with comments on what I see as the issues that the industry is facing now and in the near future. I will even dare to challenge the views of some of my friends and ex-colleagues from the industry, by making suggestions about some possible changes which might perhaps be the best for the long-term survival and success of the industry. Now is a time of reflection for me personally, so it seems an appropriate time to also reflect on the industry that has been and remains such an important part of many of our lives.

My years working for two of the turnkey subsea cable suppliers, Fujitsu and NEC, led me to work on several large cable projects (for example Southern Cross, Japan-US, AAG, etc) involving collaboration with other turnkey suppliers including ASN, TE SubCom (then Tyco), and KDD-SCS. And for the past 2 years I worked with an ‘SLTE-only’ subsea upgrade supplier, Infinera. So I have been lucky to experience many different aspects of the subsea telecom industry.

Our industry is often compared to a tar pit. Like animals unable to escape from the asphalt when they fall into a tar pit, we who have dipped our toes into the submarine cable world are usually unable to leave - even if we want to. It’s a kind of ‘Hotel California’ industry, where you can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave. But tar pits are also “... excellent locations to excavate bones of prehistoric animals ...” and can “... relentlessly grab even mammoths until they die of starvation, [or] exhaustion of trying to escape ...” In the first sense - being unable to escape - I am certainly part of the community captured by the subsea

tar pit. In the second sense, I think there is a risk that even the mammoths of our industry could end up in the tar pit - and become no more than “the bones of prehistoric animals”. So perhaps it is a good time to reflect as an industry and consider how to move forward.

ThE CurrENT STATuS:

GlASS hAlf

EMPTy Or hAlf full?

There are currently five turnkey contenders: ASN, TE SubCom, NEC, Fujitsu, and Huawei Marine Networks. But only three are really actually active in repeatered projects, and there seems not really enough business to support more than two suppliers going forward.

There are six repeater factories in the world, and only enough business to support one or two at full production levels. There are five remaining cable factories of the eight which

existed at the peak. And there are three suppliers who own cable ships, which are probably a financial burden in these times of lean new-build demand. Taking a more positive view, the annual growth in worldwide international bandwidth is still around 40 % [1], and “... between 2011 and 2013, a total of 38 new submarine cable with an estimated construction cost of [US]$ 5.6 billion are expected to launch.” [1] Furthermore the “...total worldwide WDM market revenue is forecast to grow at a 10 % CAGR over the next five years, reaching 13 billion in 2017. And much of that growth will be driven by high speed optical transmission.” [2] To add to this, as one economist recently observed “2012 turned out to be a good year. The euro did not break up, the US did not have a doubledip recession, China did not land hard, ... the world did not end on 21 December, ... [and] the global economy continued to grow ...” [3]

Looking Back - Who Controlled the Industry ?

When optical fiber technology was first introduced to subsea cables in the late 1980’s, there were, in simple terms, three choices of supplier:

• STC (UK) was strongly supported by British Telecom, the dominant international carrier in UK. STC had terminal, repeater and cable manufacturing, and BT and C&W owned the fleets of ships;

• AT&T SSI was a division of AT&T, the dominant international carrier in the USA. AT&T owned ships. AT&T SSI manufactured repeaters and terminal equipment, and was the system integrator - but it did not own a cable factory;

• In Japan, since the late 1960’s NEC and

Fujitsu had supplied subsea cables. However their business was largely under the control of KDD, the dominant international carrier in Japan. Much of the manufacturing involved patents owned by KDD Laboratories, and neither NEC nor Fujitsu owned cable factories or ships. KDD owned a fleet of ships, and OCC was the independent Japanese cable factory.

In all three cases, the ‘suppliers’ were essentially system integrators largely under the control or strongly supported by dominant international carriers. They were not fully vertically integrated, and did not need to be.

ThE 1990’S & ThE TElECOM BuBBlE: ChANGING STruCTurES

Vertical Integration

In the early 1990’s, the subsea portion of STC was sold to Alcatel, and became ASN. Tyco, which already owned the cable supplier Simplex, purchased AT&T SSI and part of Bell Labs. So the European and US suppliers were now much more separate from the dominant international carriers, and in general more vertically integrated.

In Japan, in a move converse to the privatisation of suppliers occurring in Europe and USA, the Japanese international carrier KDD created KDD-SCS, a turnkey supplier. KDD-SCS was a system integrator, and was functionally vertically integrated by way of its multiple subcontractors: initially NEC for repeaters and terminal equipment, and OCC for cable. Mitsubishi Electric became a subcontractor for repeaters and terminal equipment, and Hitachi an additional cable subcontractor.

Fujitsu had remained a separate stand-alone supplier throughout, and in the late 1990’s NEC withdrew from the KDD-SCS subcontract role, to again become a stand-alone supplier.

Shortages

With many governments privatising their countries’ telecom industries, there was a trend to private cable ownership by nontraditional carriers. The speculative rush to construct privately financed cables in the late 1990’s, peaked at US$ 12 billion supplier revenue in one year and totalled around $ 22 billion of investment in the 1999 - 2001 period - four times the 2011-2013 number above. This subsea bubble led to a shortage of almost everything, including cable, repeaters, critical components such as pump laser diodes, and cable ships.

The international carriers - except, arguably KDD - had lost their dominant position in shaping and controlling the supply industry, and suppliers tried to control their own destiny by becoming more vertically

integrated - in particular by owning ships and cable factories. ASN, Tyco and KDDSCS competed to have the largest fleet, the best cable production resources and the best repeater manufacturing resources. These aspects were truly important to purchasers at the time of award of large contracts such as Southern Cross, Japan-US, TAT-14, YellowAC-2, PC-1, etc. The purchasers had real and valid concerns that their system might be delayed by manufacturing constraints.

ASN had three cable factories around the world, and Tyco had its own factory in USA and entered into an arrangement with Hitachi for additional cable supply. So including OCC there were six cable factories world-wide for full-specification repeatered cable.

Blurring The line Between Supplier & Operator

C&W sold their cable ships to Global Crossing - who no doubt wanted to be more vertically integrated and ‘in control’ of their cable activities. There seemed a possibility that

Global Crossing would buy Tyco, making Global Crossing a fully integrated carriers’ carrier and turnkey supplier - a supplier who would have been in direct competition with many of its customers. But eventually Tyco built the TGN network, becoming itself a global carriers’ carrier in competition with Global Crossing, and in the process also becoming a direct competitor to many of its potential customers for new-build subsea cables.

Post-Crash restructuring

The bust of the bubble led to bankruptcy and reorganization of many of the private cables, including Global Crossing, 360networks, FLAG, WorldCom, and Asia Global Crossing.

Tyco sold TGN to TATA, and so Tyco became a supplier again, rather than a supplier and operator. KDDi-SCS exited the supply market, and so KDDi was a carrier again, rather than an operator and a supplier. KDDi-SCS’ previous subcontractor Mitsubishi Electric subsequently became an upgrade supplier.

In the period 2001 to 2005 the suppliers had a very difficult lean period. Cable factories were closed, and ships were sold or leased into

joint ventures. But Huawei Marine Networks entered the supply market, with terminal equipment and ships in-house; but no cable factory. Nexans and NSW became additional cable factory resources to the industry. OCC was a late casualty, and in 2008 when it was in financial difficulties, NEC purchased a 75 % shareholding. Later Hitachi Cable exited the submarine telecom cable market.

Enter the SlTE-only Suppliers

The entry of new suppliers into the SLTEonly market is not a simple subject. Changes in technology, changes in carriers’ network architecture, and changes in the market position of the parent companies of several of the legacy suppliers make it a complex and multi-faceted topic - both in the past and, I predict, in the future.

Phase 1: The Early Days

Since the early 2000’s a number of suppliers have entered the market for provision of terminal equipment (“SLTE”) only. The first of these was Azea in 2002, (acquired by Xtera in 2007) who ‘opened the door’. Mitsubishi Electric, Infinera, and Ciena joined, giving a choice of four SLTE-only suppliers in addition to the turnkey cable suppliers, which could also offer upgrades to their own or competitor suppliers’ networks.

These so-called “upgrade-only” suppliers initially provided essentially 10 Gb/s WDM transponder technology. Their differentiators were primarily lower costs and shorter delivery lead-times. Their activity was probably more of an annoyance than a threat to the legacy turnkey suppliers. The turnkey suppliers were frustrated by the decline in market pricing for SLTE, but annual upgrade revenues were

relatively small compared to new-build revenues, and initial SLTE represented only a small percentage of new build total prices.

Phase 2: Status Quo

Several disruptive new technologies emerged - including coherent detection, higher bit rates of 40 Gb/s and 100 Gb/s, new modulation schemes, and a strong trend towards OTN and meshed networks. The legacy turnkey suppliers almost certainly did not realise how quickly these technologies, aggressively marketed by the new players, would impact subsea networks. These technologies can significantly increase the ultimate capacity of existing subsea cables, and hence increase their economic life. This has had a very positive impact for owners of existing cables, and has added credibility and kudos to the SLTE-only suppliers.

The legacy suppliers have fought back claiming that they can and will deliver terminal equipment equalling or surpassing the SLTEonly vendors’ technology solutions, prices and lead-times. To date this has not happened - but such strategies miss the most critical point: the current impact on the turnkey suppliers is not from the SLTE upgrade suppliers’ solutions, nor from their lower prices or shorter leadtimes. Whoever supplies the SLTE, the key issue is that the new technologies significantly increase the ultimate capacity and economic lifetime of many existing subsea cables, and allow the ultimate capacity of new-build cables to be much higher, likewise extending their lifetime. These are both critical factors for turnkey or wet-plant suppliers - they mean that there will be a reduced demand for new cable builds on mainstream routes in the coming years.

Phase 3: Near-Term Inevitability

Promoters of new cables want the best technology, price and lead-time in the market, and they witness what is happening in the SLTE market for legacy cables. By engaging with SLTE-only suppliers for initial SLTE and upgrade SLTE, builders of new cables are able to reduce their initial costs, but equally important they are able to significantly reduce the postRFS costs of additional capacity. And they are able to make changes to the equipped initial capacity up to a few months before actual RFS date. This strengthens their business-case and assists in funding the new cable.

Once again, it is not only about price and delivery time - it is also about network architecture. The advances in optical technology and mesh networking mean that operators see that they can achieve a more integrated and robust network by adopting a POP-to-POP and integrated mesh network. It can eliminate subsea transponders, subsea transponder protection, dedicated subsea NPE, and the need to upgrade WDM SLTE’s at the cable landing station (CLS) as well as backhaul WDM networks between the CLS and POP.

Already there are private operators who want to deploy a new cable on a POP-to-POP or Data Centre-to-Data Centre basis, and to specify use of SLTE from ‘supplier A’ to integrate with their existing network. And I believe there will soon be new consortia cables where individual owners want their fibre pair to connect between their own POP’s or Data Centres. Owner 1 may want to use SLTE from supplier A, owners 2 and 3 may want to use supplier B, and owner 4 may want to use supplier C - to integrate with their respective

existing global networks. It is now technically feasible to do this even on a wavelength-bywavelength basis, by employing an OADM or R-OADM at the CLS.

At present purchasers have significantly more leverage over the turnkey / wet-plant suppliers than in the past due to the weak demand for new builds and consequent hunger by the suppliers for business.

So the turnkey cable suppliers are faced with a serious paradigm shift. The combination of the new technologies and network architectures at the same time as a slump in the new build market (significantly attributable to some of those new technologies), means that the legacy suppliers are not in a position to dictate to their customers which technology, architecture or supplier of SLTE they will use. They will need to adapt flexibly to the market’s demands.

SuPPlIEr ISSuES: NETwOrk ArChITECTurE & SlTE

suppliers will provide repeaters, cable, cable laying, power feeding, repeater supervision, and in future the supervision and control for R-OADM branching units. Such element management for PFE, repeaters and branching units will be by hardware separate from the SLTE, but will incorporate industry standard up-links and down-links for easy integration to other management systems.

The purchaser will have the option of SLTE from the wet-plant vendor or from another vendor. Suppliers such as ASN, NEC, Fujitsu and Huawei may be able to provide sophisticated OTN ASON/GMPLS mesh SLTE as their preferred option, and for those customers who already use their equipment in their terrestrial networks. However, even those wet plant / turnkey vendors will need to be able allow alternative SLTE from other suppliers.

TE SubCom is not a terrestrial network supplier, so even in the case of transponder SLTE it is faced with significant SLTE development costs spread over a relatively small quantity, compared to ASN, NEC, Fujitsu or Huawei, who should be able to share much R&D and product development with terrestrial WDM LTE, and take advantage of economies of manufacturing scale. Like the other suppliers, TE SubCom will need to be prepared to work with any kind of SLTE, but still have their own or a ‘preferred’ SLTE which they offer through a partnership arrangement with an SLTE supplier (either a legacy supplier or one of the SLTE-only suppliers).

I believe that the industry needs to move (and will, albeit reluctantly) to a separation of “wet-plant” and “SLTE”. The wet plant

Although I am convinced that the separation of wet plant and SLTE will happen, it is not without its complications and uncertainties. There are technical issues and commercial

issues to be considered and resolved:

• who will be responsible for the wet plant choices of fibre type, repeater spacing, repeater output power, repeater bandwidth, etc ? The wet plant suppliers or the SLTE supplier ?

• who will set the standards for the wetplant interface and the SLTE interface ?

• will one party take responsibility for the overall performance, or will there be separate performance criteria contracted for wet plant and SLTE ?

These are not insurmountable issues - the widespread upgrade of legacy cables by thirdparty vendors, either legacy or SLTE-only, has proven that wet plant and SLTE can be segregated. The above issues may seem to make the process more complex than purchasing a “full-turnkey” cable (including SLTE) from the turnkey supplier. But any supplier who insists upon the traditional “full-turnkey” supply as the only option, will find itself delivering the wet plant and an SLTE with 4 wavelengths on one fibre pair, which will not be upgraded, as the owners subsequently expand the capacity of the cable with their own choice of SLTE.

SuPPlIEr ISSuES:

STruCTurE & rESOurCES

Vertical Integration

Vertical integration brings advantages as well as risks. In an industry like subsea cables, which is so cyclical in demand, and in the next few years will have a particularly quiet period, vertical integration has serious drawbacks. Cable ships and cable factories represent big overheads costs, whether they are operating or on stand-by.

We know the history which led to suppliers wanting to be vertically integrated, and so have control over resources such as ships and cable. But we also know that many years ago the industry worked well with separate ship fleets owned by telecom operators such as BT or C&W, and by private cable factories such as Simplex or OCC. There are interesting lessons from other industries. For example:

• Toyota manufactures its own engines and gearboxes, which are critical components. But it also buys engines and gearboxes from other manufacturers for specific models, and sells its key components to some other manufacturers.

• Renault, Citroën and Peugeot set up joint-venture companies to develop gearboxes for use by all three.

• For large commercial airliners, the engines are a critical item. They determine the overall performance characteristics of the aircraft, including it speed and efficiency, and account for approximately one third of the total cost and 10 % of the weight. Yet neither Boeing nor Airbus manufactures engines. There are three major engine suppliers: General Electric, Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney. The Boeing 747-8 and 787 use GE engines, and the A380 uses engines either from Rolls Royce engines or from Engine Alliance (a 50%-50% joint venture between GE and Pratt & Whitney). So there is a duopoly in the large airliner market, and the two competing suppliers rely on one or two unrelated companies for their engines.

• In 1999 Motorola spun off its semiconductor business. In the early 2000’s, Alcatel sold its semiconductor

business to STMicroelectronics, and sold it optical components business to Avanex. Later NEC’s semiconductor business unit was merged with Renesas Electronics.

Although there are many other examples and counter-examples, vertical integration is not always the best choice. And even if it was the best choice at a certain time, market conditions change. There are lessons for the subsea industry from the above examples.

Number of wet Plant Suppliers

There are currently five suppliers vying for limited business. There will not be another bubble like the one of the late 1990’s and I think five is too many. Two suppliers would probably be enough, but three might be workable - just as four large airline manufacturers would be too many, and one would be too few. Four or five A380 engine manufacturers would be too many, and one would be too few.

If ASN is sold by Alcatel-Lucent it will probably remain a European supplier. TE SubCom is a USA supplier. In Japan, NEC, Fujitsu and Mitsubishi could, if they wanted to, collaborate to form a separate joint venture subsea company, with support from KDDi and NTT Communications in the form of the

references:

[1] “Subsea Special”, 10 January 2013, Capacity Magazine, in collaboration with TeleGeography.

[2] Dell’Oro Group, Market Report, “LIGHTWAVE

Direct”, 29 January 2013.

[3] “2013 and Beyond

...”, 22 January 2013, Dr Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy & Chief Economist, AMP Capital.

rights to use their respective subsea patents. The other possibility would be for Fujitsu and Mitsubishi to participate only as SLTE suppliers. But including Huawei that still leaves at least four wet plant suppliers. In my view it is too many.

repeater factories

The above scenario would leave four repeater factories (ASN, TE SubCom, one in Japan, and Huawei in China). It is too many in today’s market.

Cable factories

Considering the lumpy nature of the subsea cable market, it seems to me that cable factories owned by the wet plant suppliers are a liability. Cable factories owned by cable-specific companies should be able to cope better with peaks and troughs in the subsea telecom industry if they have many other product lines for other markets, whose demand cycles are not synchronised with the subsea market’s cycle. An option is for ASN’s cable factory be split off and sold to a cable company - the media has already suggested Nexans and Prysmian as possible candidates. TE SubCom might consider sale of its cable factory to a US cable supplier, and in Japan Sumitomo or Hitachi Cable could acquire OCC.

Cable Ships

A similar argument can be made regarding ships, which should preferably be owned by shipping companies - or perhaps by operators like FT and KDD. In retrospect NEC and Fujitsu have been lucky that they never owned ships, and Huawei Marine is fortunate that it is a joint venture with a ship company which can find other markets, such as subsea power cables or the oil and gas industry, in which to utilise its vessels when the subsea telecom

market is slow. ASN’s cable ships could be sold separately, and TE SubCom might consider the sale of its ships for the above reasons.

Number SlTE-only Suppliers

There are currently four suppliers in the SLTE-only business. In the near term there is significant demand for upgrade of legacy cables, and in future I believe they will supply SLTE for new cables. However, if several of the ‘turnkey’ suppliers catch up in terms of technology, functionality, price and lead-time and release new SLTE’s, then there could be seven or more SLTE suppliers. That would definitely be too many - but only time will tell.

EPIlOGuE

The above are my personal thoughtssometimes intentionally provocative, hopefully constructive but often without all of the detailed information and facts necessary to make the best proposals about such significant changes. And industry politics will surely play as big a role as other factors in any eventual decisions for change. I hope that I have challenged many readers and maybe provoked some strong reactions. In the near future I think many tough decisions will need to be taken, and they are actually more likely to be imposed by the parent companies (eg: Alcatel-Lucent, TE Connectivity, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Huawei Technologies, etc), than by the subsea suppliers as we know them. If subsea business is not critical core business, and if it is not profitable, then radical changes will be made - as we currently witness with the recent announcement to put ASN on the market. The worst outcome would be that we end up with the respective governments of France, USA, Japan and China owning the four subsea

suppliers, in a repeat of the General Motors bailout. Not likely ! Governments often make a lot of noise, but the parent companies will make the decisions.

further Debate at SubOptic 2013

Having put my personal comments and suggestions on paper, what next ? As part of SubOptic 2013 there will be a roundtable session on Thursday 25 April 2013 entitled “The Future for Cable System Suppliers”. I hope and suggest that the participants and the audience alike will use that forum to express their frank and honest opinions, and that some of my comments may spark debate during that SubOptic 2013 session.

Colin Anderson has 25 years’ experience in sales & marketing, engineering, and business development roles in the subsea and terrestrial telecommunications markets. He has worked for Fujitsu Submarine Networks and NEC Submarine Networks, and in those roles worked on several cable projects which involved collaboration with Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, TE SubCom, or KDDi-SCS. For the two years to December 2012, Colin worked for Infinera as Business Development Manager for subsea upgrade business. Colin was Program Chairman for SubOptic 2010 held in Yokohama Japan in May 2010, and is a past member of the SubOptic Executive Committee. He has BSc and MBA degrees, and is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

The Challenge: entering the Turnkey Marketplace

Nigel bayliff & Jas Dhooper

A new beginning

In any mature market the norms and standards of product, process and practices are established over many years. Such markets can settle into contentment; status quo, stability and stasis reigns whilst innovation and inventiveness often slows or takes a back seat. The expansion and subsequent corrective upheaval in our industry over the last two decades has been studied, dissected and analysed by many and might not, at first glance, seem to provide space nor opportunity for new entrants.

Concentrating on solid engineering and business principles, consulting with and listening to Customers and combining experience with innovation are the keys to success in our particular market place –Submarine Optical Cable Systems.

Huawei Marine Networks (HMN) was merely a series of well-developed plans at SubOptic 2007 in Baltimore but by SubOptic 2010 in Yokohama we were established, trading and well through our formative stages. It is appropriate, for SubOptic 2013, to review and reflect on the journey so far.

that build or operate Submarine Cable Systems.

Similar to any child, the chances of survival and longevity greatly depend upon the genetics of the parents and with two who are well established and financial secure, HMN was given an excellent start. On one hand, an established world-class Telecommunications equipment supplier with an enormous established customer base & expert knowledge in optical domain and the other, a marine expert with over 160 year experience in laying & maintaining telecom systems and power cables.

Entry thus secured, it now fell to Huawei Marine Networks to capitalize on the genetics and, step by step, develop

The prime focus for Huawei Marine Networks, since its birth in December 2008, is to develop a long-term global business to service both existing and new Customers

knowledge, competence and tenure in the market through the pragmatic delivery of product, capability and some commercial systems.

A Challenging Market?

Many research organizations and indicators are used to gauge our market and whilst estimates vary and timeframes often extend, it is generally true that the world desires to be and is becoming a more connected place. In the two “seasons” of SubOptic that we have existed, much has been done to connect ‘telecommunicators’ to the cloud and much to expand the major links of the subsea infrastructure. There are still, however, many places that have either old & insufficient cable capacity, with little scope to upgrade or no cable connections

Leading telecommunications supplier in the world

at all. Couple this with technology and attitude changes amongst other sea bed users, driving new applications for telecommunications cables and we see a market which is opening and providing for healthy growth in the coming years.

Breaking into such an established market does require some dedication and some unique skills and experiences. Trying to act as an integrator and bringing the relevant pieces together to make the turnkey offering is only part of the challenge. We start with the experiences of 160 years of cable laying and maintenance, Global Marine Systems Limited. Their vessel fleet, support organization, highly knowledgeable & experienced Officers, Specialists and crew are all locked into supporting the HMN team. In addition, GMSL’s research, development and testing facilities for subsea technology became an integral part of the HMN research and development program for repeater and branching unit technology development.

Similarly, developing world-leading Submarine Line Monitoring and SLTE is an intensive, expensive and heavy-effort activity, but with HMN teaming with the 55,000 strong Huawei Technologies R&D group and able to rapidly model, simulate, configure and prototype variants to meet specific requirements, we have managed to maintain a strong position in this optical technology space. This allows us to deliver

upgrades to existing systems whilst using this market-gained experience to tailor technology for new turnkey opportunities.

New 1600 sq m clean room in Dong guan

Throughout our development we have been very open to working with Customers and their Consultants to really understand the particular need for any given system; tuning the technology both in the wet plant and the terminals to address latency, overall design capacity or cost. We have always tried to include maximal flexibility for the Customer, offering a range of design options to suit contractual or technical preference.

The amplifiers in our repeaters, for instance, can provide enhanced reliability by coupling adjacent pair lasers – an option which appears to polarise market opinion, but is available to those who desire.

what were the Barriers to Entry?

Implementing turnkey systems begins a long-term relationship between developer and vendor and requires a strong commitment by both. Lifetime cycles for turnkey are measured in decades, with upgrades and other simple reconfigurations having lives of often just a few years. Many factors need to be addressed before a new entrant is trusted in this discerning and conservative market.

Firstly, business longevity in a global marketplace – major capital projects such as these require a strong sense of stability and security from the organization selected to deliver them. With Global Marine’s extensive, experienced fleet &160 year history in this space and Huawei Technologies having grown to number one in optical transmission systems worldwide, with operations in well over 120 countries and upwards of $35bn revenues annually, we were soon able to assuage any fears in this regard. Confidence was built in cooperation with the local Huawei offices and teams, bringing flexibility to pre, during and post system delivery communication and service provision. Huawei Marine’s specialist teams in UK and China work seamlessly with the local offices, providing complete flexibility to meet the Customer’s needs in their way, when they want and in whatever language they want.

Secondly, technical suitability – as a new entrant we simply didn’t have 20 or 30 years of in-service product reliability and performance data, so our focus was to develop qualification and testing regimes which seek, using excellent engineering practice, of the sort often showcased at SubOptic, to provide as rigorous a proving ground as the worst of real-life applications. In fact, we took the testing beyond that normally done, to continually stress all our products so that we are sure that our Customers can place their trust in them for many decades to come. All this testing is openly provided to prospective Customers, so they can see the dedication and rigour of this qualification program.

R1 repeater through cable engine

Huawei Marine initially focused on bringing its innovative 2 fibre pair repeater to market, production engineering the initial design to closely fit industry requirements. We then began the development of the first ever Titaniumcased six fibre pair repeater, with an

innovative narrow design to improve burial confidence using standard ploughs. This concluded last quarter and we formally launched commercial availability at PTC this year. Other UJä compatible devices, including several Branching Unit variants, provide a complete family of products for long-haul optical submarine cable systems.

And finally, delivery capability – can the new entrant combine all of the complex, discrete and inter-related elements of turnkey delivery, some outsourced and many not performed in the country of delivery, to create a seamlessly flowing program of events culminating in the final acceptance of a fully tested and working system. Again, the injection of experts from both parents helped Huawei Marine to combine significant expertise with lessons forged over many years. External experts were brought in to advise on methodology and

quality standards. Coupling this with an ever-searching desire to improve on each and every activity, with a Customer-centric communications approach, HMN has been able to deliver projects throughout the world in some very testing circumstances.

Huawei Marine Networks faced these entry challenges and through pragmatic teamwork, expertise from both parents and outside sources and a strong focus on project management, we have successfully delivered more than ten turnkey systems and numerous upgrades to Customers all over the globe.

where does this lead us

A market such as ours is established, enhanced and driven by technological innovation; pushing the boundaries of established convention. Had Cyrus Field and his backers not seen the potential advantages of the dramatic improvement in latency by moving mail messages to telegraph across the Atlantic then perhaps we would still be writing copper-script memoranda with our quills and the only use for pure silica would be to dust over the ink to prevent smudging.

For many years, the SubOptic organization has provided the vehicle, encouragement and incentive for developers, engineers and executives in our industry to share ideas, new concepts, technology advancements

R2 repeater testing around the sheave

and new business models. The dialogue has and does continue outside the formal conferences, with competitors collaborating, customers cooperating and consultants corroborating.

Faced with the challenges of entering this long-established market, HMN have concentrated on lessons learned through groups such as SubOptic which is to set clear goals, establish solid standards for process, manufacturing & engineering and work hard with Customers to understand their detailed requirements.

Following this approach has allowed HMN to achieve break-even at the end of 2012; a huge milestone for us in a difficult period for our market and the global economy. It is especially good that we are able to announce this before SubOptic 2013 and after only our fourth year of operation.

SubOptic 2013 marks a new era for us, with a newly qualified six fibre pair repeater containing the innovative benefits of modern materials, flexible configuration and produced in a state of the art manufacturing facility. We’re ready for the challenges of the next cycle.

Nigel Bayliff is the Chief Executive Officer of Huawei Marine Networks. Nigel joined the organisation in 2009 bringing over 20 years of technical and executive experience in the global telecommunications industry. From 2002 to 2008 Nigel was a member of the Executive team of FLAG Telecom, where he served as an Officer and Deputy Chairman for a number of group companies. He was responsible for Construction and Operations of the FLAG Global Network, encompassing some 55,000 km of submarine cable systems connecting 40 countries. Prior to this he held senior roles at NTL (now Virgin Media) and Cable & Wireless/Mercury Communications. Nigel is a Chartered Engineer and holds a B.Sc(hons) in Telecommunications Engineering from Essex University. In 2006 he was elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering Technology. Nigel has completed Executive Development programmes at Ashridge, UK and INSEAD, France.

Jas Dhooper has over 20 years’ experience in the Submarine & Service Provider Telecom Sectors and currently serving as, VP Service Delivery Office for Huawei Marine Networks (HMN) in China. He has gained significant experience in large scale telecommunications project delivery of optical submarine systems and delivered many multi-million dollar projects in a number of countries. He was employed by STC Submarine systems in the late 1980’s, which consolidated into Alcatel Submarine Systems in the 1990’s. He was involved in a number of the major transatlantic submarine systems both in a development role and in delivery, including time on cable ships. Jas also has held a number of senior management & technical positions in the operator side, working for Cable & Wireless, Interoute communications since the mid-1990s and Global Marine Systems. Jas holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA), Engineering honors degree from London University and is a Fellow member of the IET.

High

Capacity Undersea Systems for Channels beyond 100G

Glenn Wellbrock, Tiejun J. Xia, & Steven Gringeri

Figure 1: (a) Fiber capacity progress for long-haul submarine distances (>4,000 km) and (b) fiber capacity versus distances [112].

Global network traffic demands are forecasted to increase substantially for the foreseeable future to meet high growth in service demands, such as video downloading, file sharing, and cloud computing. Therefore, network service providers must keep pace by increasing their network capacity and face the challenge of evolving existing undersea systems to support service bitrates of 100Gb/s and beyond, as the undersea portion of the network must keep up with the traffic demands in the terrestrial networks, to which it interconnects.

These challenges can be met by both increasing channel capacity (channel data rate) and increasing overall link capacity. This can be achieved by increasing the coding efficiency, using advanced modulation formats and improved forward error coding, and by improving the channel packing.

In this article, techniques to enhance fiber capacity and channel capacity of undersea systems are reviewed.

undersea fiber Capacity Enhancement

The fiber capacity in submarine R&D labs has grown from around 5 Tb/s to 30 Tb/s in less than ten years, thanks to technology advancements. Figure 1 shows the major results in the undersea fiber capacity progress [1-12].

The introduction of phase modulation into submarine systems [13] to replace traditional binary on-off keying is the primary innovation that increased data rates. Figure 1(a) shows the growth in fiber capacity over the last ten years. In 2004, differential phase shift keying (DPSK) supported 40 Gb/s channels and allowed fiber capacity of around 5 Tb/s [1]. Subsequently, differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) supported a

similar capacity [2] but with half the baud rate of DPSK. The introduction of coherent detection and digital signal processing (DSP) to recover the received signal further reduced the required receiver optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR). This allowed signals with more complex phase and/ or amplitude modulation to travel longer distances with similar OSNR compared to direct detection. With a DSP in the receiver, polarization tangling can be resolved easily; therefore, polarization multiplexing can be used to double the capacity with only a small increase in design complexity. In 2009, the industry reached around 15 Tb/s fiber capacity for long-haul submarine distances with both coherent detection and polarization multiplexed QPSK 100 Gb/s channels [5, 6]. In 2011 a milestone of 20 Tb/s for undersea transmission was reached by packing almost two hundred 100 Gb/s channels into the C-band [9]. Traditional digital transmission systems use about 7% overhead for forward error correction (FEC) to improve the fidelity of the received signal. In submarine systems, higher order modulation can improve spectral efficiency but increased FEC overhead may also be required to maintain the desired transmission distances. Most recently capacity has reached 25 Tb/s and 30 Tb/s by packing more channels into a single fiber [10, 11]. In these experiments, spectral efficiency is improved by using 16QAM, instead of QPSK to double the channel rate and strong FEC is required to maintain the required OSNR. When

Figure 2

Various superchannel types in frequency domain, (a) generic WDM superchannel, (b) all-optical OFDM superchannel, (c) Nyquist superchannel, and (d) classic OFDM superchannel.

references:

[1] G. Charlet et al., OFC 2004, PDP36.

[2] G. Charlet et al., ECOC 2005. Th4.1.3.

[3] G. Charlet et al., ECOC 2008, Th.3.E.3.

[4] G. Charlet et al., OFC/NFOEC 2009, PDPB6.

[5] H. Masuda et al., OFC/NFOEC 2009, PDPB5.

[6] M. Salsi et al., ECOC 2009, PD2.5.

[7] J.-X. Cai et al., OFC/NFOEC 2010, PDPB10.

[8] J.-X. Cai et al., ECOC 2010, PD2.1.

[9] M. Salsi et al., ECOC 2010, We.7.C.3.

[10] J.-X. Cai et al., OFC/NFOEC 2011, PDPB4.

channels are packed tighter or higher order modulation formats are used to increase fiber capacity, interactions between the channels as well as higher OSNR requirements may reduce the reach distance, as seen in Figure 1(b). Based on these techniques, 30 Tb/s can be supported for transatlantic distances while only 10 Tb/s can be supported transpacific distances.

undersea Channel Capacity Enhancements

As the port speeds of data equipment evolve to beyond 100 Gb/s, service providers will be required to support the new standards. Therefore, optical channels must support potential data rates such as 400 Gb/s or 1 Tb/s. For terrestrial applications, 100 Gb/s services are supported using a single optical carrier, but for very long submarine distances or higher services rates this will no longer be possible. When the channel capacity goes beyond 100 Gb/s, channel design will experience a paradigm change due to bandwidth limitations in electrical/optical components and OSNR requirement limitations [14] where multiple optical carriers will be required. A channel with multiple optical carriers is referred to as a superchannel [15]. Experiments have been reported on constructing superchannels to handle channel capacities beyond 100 Gb/s [16, 17]. A key factor to increase fiber capacity is to increase spectral efficiency. To increase spectral efficiency the optical

carriers belonging to a superchannel must be tightly packed, to reduce the overall bandwidth that the superchannel occupies.

There are several different ways to construct a superchannel. Figure 2 shows four different types of superchannels under investigation. Figure 2(a) shows a generic WDM superchannel, which is built using multiple single carrier channels with minimal shaping of the optical spectrum. For example, a 400G superchannel can be created by just reducing the spectral gaps between four 100G PM-QPSK channels. The performance of the superchannel directly depends on the spectral spacing between the carriers. Figure 2(b) shows an all-optical OFDM superchannel, in which the optical carriers are arranged such that adjacent carrier spacing is exactly the symbol rate of the carriers so that the carriers are orthogonal to each other. Four all-optical OFDM superchannels, each of which is 1.15 Tb/s, have been transmitted over more than 10,000 km successfully [17].

Figure 2(c) shows a Nyquist superchannel, which has the spectral shape of its carriers

close to a rectangular spectrum and a bandwidth equal to the symbol rate. Its Fourier transform in the time domain is a sync function, which means there is minimal inter-symbol interference if the signal sampling is ideal. A Nyquist spectral shape can be obtained by manipulating the modulator drive signals or by using a special optical filter post modulation [18]. By modifying the spectral shapes of optical carriers to be Nyquist-like, a 1.2-Tb/s superchannel with ten optical carriers traveled for 9,000 km [19]. Figure 2(d) shows a classic OFDM superchannel, which has many optical carriers generated by a conventional OFDM design. Each optical carrier is generated by a group of electrical subcarriers, which are orthogonal to each other. Since each optical carrier is composed of many lower baud rate electrical carriers the optical spectra is very much square shaped and its edge slope is determined by the bandwidth of the electrical subcarriers. Therefore, there is little spectral overlap between the optical carriers. One classic OFDM superchannel of 1.5 Tb/s traveled over 5,600 km

references:

[11] M. Mazurczyk et al., ECOC 2012, Th.3.C.2.

[12] J.-X. Cai et al., ECOC 2012, Mo.1.C.1.

[13] A. H. Gnauck et al., OFC 2002, FC2.

[14] T. J. Xia, Opt. Fiber Tech., 17(5), 328 (2011).

[15] S. Gringeri et al., IEEE Comm. Mag., 50(2), S21 (2012).

[16] X. Liu et al., ECOC 2012, Th.3.C.5.

[17] Y.-K. Huang et al., ACP 2011, Paper 83092A.

[18] Y.-K. Huang et al., ACP 2012, PAF4C.2.

[19] E. Torrengo et al., ECOC 2010, We.7.C.2.

[20] D. Qian et al., ECOC 2011, Th.13.K.3.

[21] K. Roberts and C. Laperle, ECOC 2012, We.3.A.3.

successfully. The superchannel had eight optical carriers and each optical carrier had 76 16-QAM electrical subcarriers [16]. Another classic OFDM superchannel experiment used 8-QAM to have a longer reach more than 10,000km [20].

Adaptive Transceivers for undersea Transport

As mentioned above the maximum capacity of a submarine link depends on various parameters, such as reach distance, bit rate, modulation format, amplification scheme, fiber configuration, etc. Traditionally, transceivers had a fixed performance based on the optical components that were selected. With the introduction of digital signal processing in the new generation of coherent transceivers, it is now possible to design flexible hardware that will support tradeoffs between the parameters under software control [21]. Figure 3 shows an illustration of such a device where software “knobs” could be configured to achieve the desired performance. Parameters such as the modulation scheme (BPSK, 8QAM, QPSK, 16-QAM), forward error correcting (FEC) coding overhead (7%, 13%, 20%, 25%), symbol rate, and number of carriers can be varied under software control to achieve the desired performance. Rates greater than 100 Gb/s (such as 400 Gb/s or even 1 Tb/s) can be supported by using various combinations of bits per symbol, carriers, and symbol rates based on the desired reach [15]. Flexible

spectral allocation may also be required to achieve high spectral efficiency for superchannels. Both the symbol rate and FEC overhead knobs can be used to finetune the superchannel’s bandwidth. There are several operating modes possible depending on what parameter is fixed. For instance, with a fixed amount of spectrum, bitrate could vary with reach or for a fixed bitrate, spectrum of a channel could be increased to maintain distance. These parameters that determine the optical performance can be controlled to meet application needs and maximize network resource utilization.

Figure 3 Schematic representation of a tunable transceiver for submarine applications that illustrates various parameters that can be configured.

Conclusions

The submarine portion of a global network must evolve to handle both total capacity and channel capacity requirements. Mature coherent detection with powerful digital signal processing and other newly developed technologies have the promise to enhance submarine capacity to approximately 30 Tb/s per fiber. Superchannels will support tightly packed carriers to further enhance spectral efficiency and support service rates beyond 100 Gb/s. Since channel performance depends on specific submarine link parameter, the future transceiver will be able to be adaptive to different submarine link condition to optimize performance.

Glenn Wellbrock is director of optical transport network architecture, design and planning at Verizon, where he is responsible for the development and deployment of new technologies for both the metro and long haul transport infrastructure.

Prior to this position, Wellbrock ran the advanced technology lab, established evaluation criteria and set engineering guidelines for all backbone transport equipment as well as various positions within network operations.

In addition to his more than 20 years at Verizon (1984-2001 and 2004-present), Wellbrock was responsible for product

architecture within the U.S. optical networks group at Marconi and product planning at Qplus Networks with a specific focus on developing alternative modulation techniques.

Tiejun J. (TJ) Xia, Ph.D., is an expert of photonic technologies and optical fiber communications in research, development, and technology innovations. He currently is a distinguished member of technical staff at Verizon where he is responsible for optical network technology development. Dr. Xia also is an adjunct professor at Miami University in Ohio.

Previously Dr. Xia was director for network technology development at Chorum Technologies. Prior to the position, he worked at MCI as a senior engineer. Before joining MCI, he was a research faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Dallas from 2005 through 2009.

Dr. Xia is co-founder and current president of the Advanced Fiber Connectivity & Switching Forum. He has served on technical program committees for OFC/ NFOEC, APOC, ACP, and OECC. He also serves on the executive board of IEEE Dallas Section.

from CREOL (Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers) at the University of Central Florida, an M.S. degree from Zhejiang University, China, and a B.S. degree from the University of Science and Technology of China.

He has published more than 100 technical papers, given numerous invited talks, and holds more than 60 granted or pending U.S. patents. He is a Fellow of OSA. In 2011, he was featured as a “Verizon Innovator” on YouTube.

Steve Gringeri currently is a principal member of technical staff and is responsible for the architecture, specification, and deployment of nextgeneration optical networks.

Gringeri joined General Electric in 1986 where he developed signal processing algorithms and systems for machine health monitoring. In 1990 he joined GTE Laboratories, now Verizon Laboratories, where his research and development activities have varied from video compression to the design and specification of metropolitan and long-haul networks.

Gringeri received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1986 and 1989, respectively.

Dr. Xia has a Ph.D. degree in physics

Meeting Demand in the Latin America Subsea Industry

Meeting global communications demand requires a very complex, time-intensive process. Years of planning and deployment culminate in connecting continents by way of capital-intensive fiber-optic subsea cable networks. Demand for increased broadband on a global scale has been rising at considerable rates. According to Cisco Systems’ Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast & Methodology 2010-2015 report: Internet video will account for over 50 percent of consumer Internet traffic. And, in 2013 alone, one million minutes of video content will cross the network with each passing second. This data is astounding!

looking At latin America

The communications market in Latin America is recognized globally as one of the industry’s highest growth potential. What is driving demand to/from Latin America?

The need for high performance telecoms applications and technologies throughout Latin America is more prevalent today due to several key dynamics including:

• New network technologies to support future demand for fixed sector and new wireless technologies such as 2G, 3G, 4G/LTE across the mobile sector.

• Terrestrial network providers are readying for seasonal and global events such as: Formula 1 racing, PanAmerican Games, ‘13-’15 X-Games, 2014 World Cup, 2016 Olympics.

• Financial markets with high frequency traders and brokers looking to leverage ultra-low latency networks to support electronic high volume stock, options and algorithm trading across major exchanges in both the U.S. and Brazil.

• Emerging Video market for direct, high capacity bandwidth to support superior video user experiences and seasonal broadcast events.

• More enterprises looking to enabling corporate interactive video applications, such as TelePresence amongst headquarters and regional office or customer locations globally.

In addition, economically speaking, there is a tremendous amount of growth in South America. Brazil, as the sixth-largest economy in the world expanded 1.6% in 2012. Although this figure is smaller than its original estimate of 2.5%, Brazil still remains a strong global economic contender. Its growing middle class’ disposable income has increased over the last several years, with over half (52%) of Brazilian families belonging to the middle class, spurring steady economic growth in the region. If trends such as countrywide and economic growth and reduced inequality are maintained, an estimated

57% of Brazil’s population will be in the middle class by 2022.

As such, carriers and service providers have to prepare their infrastructure within Latin America to handle the widespread adoption and use of today’s applications and technologies. But, can the existing subsea networks handle the forecasted International demand? The answer is YES! We know from TeleGeography data that there is already ample lit capacity going into Latin America with new technology further extending the life of existing subsea infrastructures whilst adding 10x or more headroom for future expansion. Most certainly certain geographic areas or islands could benefit from added International infrastructure, but any investment must pass the litmus test of positive return on capital.

Prepared for Demand

GlobeNet, an international wholesale provider of transport services, has been building networks and creating partnerships into Brazil and throughout South America for many years. With thousands of route miles GlobeNet is able to securely connect Brazil with Venezuela, Colombia, Bermuda and the United States. Its over 22,500 kilometer fiber optic subsea network based on the latest Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology was engineered for low latency and high capacity. The company is well positioned to expand

and continue its heritage of serving the Americas, with massive international broadband capacities across diverse routes, reliability with 99.99% service availability – all delivered at competitive prices. With vast amounts of design and lit capacity available, wholesale customers can scale quickly.

GlobeNet recently completed the replacement of its Segment 5 subsea cable system. The new cable system has a capacity of 30Tb/s providing more than 30 times the current capacity between Bermuda and the United States. In addition, GlobeNet started work on extending its subsea network to Colombia, thus creating an express route from its future landing on Colombia’s Atlantic coast to Miami, Florida - USA.

The existing advanced network architecture, coupled with these latest network upgrades further serves the growing demand for bandwidthintensive services from carriers, Internet Service Providers, Social Networks, CDNs, financial services, and endusers throughout Latin America and the United States.The tremendous increase of bandwidth capability further solidifies GlobeNet’s position as a market leader with a superior network infrastructure.

GlobeNet is ready today to support the future growth in Latin America, and in particular Brazil, where there is already an increase in demand for networks to

address high performance applications and services, such as 4G/LTE, FFTH, IPTV including HD and 3D video programming, and support of major sporting events taking place in Brazil in the coming years.

Erick Contag is the Chief Operating Officer for GlobeNet. Mr. Contag brings more than twenty years of sales, marketing, business development, strategy and corporate management expertise to GlobeNet. His responsibilities include strategic management of the company’s business operations and expansion into new regions. In 2011, Mr. Contag was awarded the Global Telecoms Business Power 100 Award, an honor bestowed upon the most powerful 100 executives in the telecom industry.

SubOptic: The essence Of The Industry

Stephen Jarvis

Communication is the essence of the Submarine-Telecoms industry. It is what’s bought, sold, and necessary for the prosperity of all involved companies.

Without the interaction of the industry as a whole, the changing industrial and technological landscape of the world cannot be effectively examined and responded to in the best interests of all parties. For that reason, many conferences exist; one of the largest of which is Sub-Optic.

“I think there needs to be a forum, such as SubOptic, where representatives from all parts of the industry can get together,” said John Horne, Secretary to the Sub-Optic Executive Committee.

The Sub-Optic organization held its first convention in 1986. It was created as a “nonprofit, mutual, non-incorporated international organization,” according to its website. The organization is operated by 14-19 companies from multiple aspects of the industry.

“It’s the only conference in the industry… that can actually begin to discuss issues,” said Horne. To him, Sub-Optic is unusual among conferences.

Sub-optic sets itself apart from most industry conferences, says Horne, by being about more than companies meeting for sales purposes.

“We provide a much broader spread of topics at a much more expert level.

“Because the papers that we select go through a peer review policy,” said Horne. The committee aims for a strong professional atmosphere to the more academic aspects of the conference. In deciding on papers,

reviews are charged with finding papers of significance to the industry that come from truly credible sources.

Sub-Optic also allows access to all of this beyond the conference. “We’re the only organization that provides a professional archive of all the papers and presentations that have been made at our previous conferences,” said Horne. The information they produce goes beyond the conference in many ways.

“One thing that we have done that is unique to our conference is that we have taken some

work outside of the conference,” said Horne. Sub-Optic has helped to develop model contracts for submarine cable projects. This is to provide a kind of standardized contract in the hopes of making contract negotiation easier for the industry at large.

“There are people in our industry that find the kind of information we put together of an enduring nature,” said Horne. “Some of the things we talk about, like cable protection, are not things that change overnight.” For that reason, information that has been documented

has a value to the industry and requires a method of distribution, a service that SubOptic attempts to provide.

When things do change, however, Sub-Optic makes it a point to include those changes in the conference, according to Horne. For instance, Upgrades have recently drastically changed how money is being spent on improving systems.

“We set up a program committee and a paper selection committee, populated by senior members of our industry,” said Horne. The selections of these committees are meant to do two things:

• Make sure the program is selected by members that represent the industry, assuring credibility.

• Make sure that the members of these committees represent many aspects of the industry.

“You can’t say ‘Well, I’m a core system supplier, and I don’t particularly want companies that are upgrade specialist to be present because they might under-cut our market,’” said Horne. “We’re not in that kind of game. We try to represent all segments of the industry.”

The conference is meant to look at the future of the industry, said Horne. To that end, issues like upgrades have to be part of the discussion.

And upgrades, in particular, need a strong discussion. In a previous Sub-Tel Forum article, Eric Handa, co-founder of APTelecom, commented that that the time will soon come when cables reach the point of “diminishing marginal returns;” the point where even with the improved upgrades technology won’t

make up for the age of the system. He even went so far as asking if it is worth putting a new engine in a 15-year-old car.

“Yes, you would, if it was a Rolls-Royce,” said Horne. “When you look at the quality of the engineering that has gone into many of the systems… I’d say it makes a lot of sense to put a new engine in a 15-year-old system.” This is provided, of course, that the system in question doesn’t have a history of technical problems.

According to Horne, the true lifespan of a system can’t be properly defined. He gives the example of TAT-1, which was retired after 22 years. Its retirement wasn’t due to the system aging and breaking down, but because its operation was costly when compared to newer parallel systems, given their signal speed. If an option to upgrade this system had been there, it may have stayed competitive and lasted far longer.

will be some fatal error in the system after that point. But Horne says there is nothing inherently in the system that can truly define when a system will fail.

“So, I think one of the interesting issues that may come up during Sub-Optic 2013 might not just be upgradability,” said Horne, “but when does it not make economic sense to upgrade. And I think this is not so well defined as whether you put a new engine in a 15-year-old car.”

“I think it (Sub-Optic) has a major role to play in getting a forum to that kind of thing being discussed,” said Horne.

“If Sub-Optic didn’t exist, I feel somebody would invent a replacement for it,” said Horne. Stephen Jarvis is a freelance writer in the Washington D.C. area. He has published articles and done editorial work with several publications including Submarine Telecoms Forum. Also, he has been a speaker for the Popular Culture Association / American Culture Association National Conference.

“If you get an optical amplified system,” said Horne, “what actually is its life?” Twenty-five years is talked about, which suggests that there

Letter to a friend

My dear friend,

I look forward to SubOptic 2013 where I will have the pleasure to meet many old fellows including you my friend. Not sure I will learn a lot. I suspect the papers, oral or posters, will carefully avoid unveiling anything which could be useful to the competition .And in such a family event people always hesitate to express their differences or disagreements

It will most likely be my very last SubOptic but you are a bit younger than me and I can predict , without any great risk , the

Jean Devos

drastic changes that you are going to live in a very near future . The events will force SubOptic to operate the transformation that the present management has not got the gut or the vision to launch.

Listen to my prediction:

That day I see you comfortably seated in a huge and brand new auditorium. The speakers are far down on the stage but you can see them very well on the large screen of your armchair. You have actively contributed to the debate by raising questions using your inter-active tablet!

There are around a thousand people in the room and more are watching from distant rooms in London and Shanghai. By the large windows you can easily see the Corcovado, arm wide open, the well known symbol of Rio; everywhere there are hanging flags mentioning “SubOptic 2020 World forum”, in the same style as the one of the 2016 Olympics.

The three eminent panelists are sitting at an electronic table: The president of the SubOptic association, the general manager of the global network regulatory body and the general delegate of the Network Users. The discussion is moderated by the head of Petabit Consulting. The subject of the debate is “Reshaping the global network”

During the coffee break, responding to your questions, the guy sitting next to you, bearing a badge from the Indian Tata Group, explained to you the recent evolutions

“Following the Rogucci and Terabit consulting reports, but also several serious network interruptions, the States could not stay without reactions. SubOptic was still a very informal structure not having transformed itself into the industry body speaking for the industry and making sure the industry was building the best and safest possible global network The creation of a regulatory body (GNR) could only be expected and was imposed to the

industry This was done as early as 2014. GNR is a UN entity! SubOptic was forced to shrink down to become the “construction industry association”. On the other side the regulator has initiated an organism representative of all the “cable owners”

The moderator is now giving a short presentation of the situation and the problems to be resolved

“As you all know the collapse of Syria in 2014 and the bombing of the Iranian nuclear plants have put the full Middle-East into war. As a consequence, all the Red-Sea and Persian Gulf cables, as well as those of eastern Mediterranean are out of services, with no possibility to repair due to the military situation. This includes the most recent Tagare and Seamewe 5 super high capacity cables. To make the picture even worse, all the West Africa cables were cut by the extremists group based in Mauritania, following the takeover of this country by the people who have been ruling North Mali since 2012! They hijacked a Dakar based Atlantic maintenance ship and used our published maps to damage the cables, preventing the rerouting of the Asia-Europe traffic by this route! A U.N resolution will probably support a military action to recoup and protect these cables, but this process is very slow .The cable laid on the Arctic route in 2015/2016, together with the new Brazil-Europe , Brazil SouthAfrica and Australia-Chile cables have been a real but insufficient help! It is also worrying

to see the growing troubles in some South-east Asia countries, representing a real threat for the cables in the Malacca straits.

Together with the oil crisis, these network failures have contributed to plunge the world economy in the severe recession that we suffer from for the last couple of years The world has made a 10years step back and even more for some countries. It is our duty to put in place an emergency plan. So, I will now leave the floor to the president of SubOptic who will tell us what the industry can offer in term of technology, engineering and emergency planning.”

You think that I am pessimistic? At least you could accept the fact that all this is plausible. It is time for our industry to behave at the level of our responsibilities!

Submarcom consulting

SubOptic: What Could It Look Like In The future?

John Horne

In this edition of Subtelforum there are two articles, one provided by Fiona Beck and the other by Jean Devos, both talking about the future of SubOptic.

One gives a very positive view about SubOptic and the other gives a rather negative view of the SubOptic organisation and talks rather disparagingly about the lack of guts or vision of the present management to launch a transformation.

I will not tell you who wrote each article, but even if you do not read them, you will probably guess.

So what will SubOptic look like in the future and what role or responsibilities will it undertake. Well here is my personal take (not an agreed SubOptic position) on the subject.

I start from the position of what does SubOptic do best!

We organise with the significant help of a Host organisation the best conference in the world, covering commercial, technical and operational areas and that represents and covers our industry. We only hold it every three years, so there is always something original for it to say and Speakers cannot buy access to present there, like I am assured they do in most commercial conferences in our field.

It is all done on a voluntary basis and has been done since I joined the organisation

in 1999 and since its origin in 1986. To help put this into perspective the oral/ poster paper presentations, the core of the programme that will be presented at Paris in April 2013 - some 130+ of them will all have been peer reviewed by volunteer industry experts in the field.

Sounds easy, when you put it like that.

To undertake a peer review process on the 160+ abstracts submitted in answer to our “Call for Papers” , however requires 80+ individuals undertaking 1652+ individual reviews – All done on a voluntarily basis

and 98% completed. Oh by the way this all has to be done within two-three weeks of a cut-off date and by people whose timetable is – let us say stretched.

This is supported by a Programme Chair, again working on a voluntary basis, who has to arrange a full programme of Keynote Speakers, Roundtables, Masterclass tutorials and other events. Though we make a small financial contribution to Keynote Speakers who do not come from our immediate industry, all other contributors offer their time on a voluntary basis.

So that’s the programme, but let’s not forget the Host who has to arrange the logistics for an event with 600-700 attendees, several presentation areas, an exhibition hall, social networking parties, hotel accommodation, etc, etc. All the support required to project manage the organisation of this, is done free of charge to the event.

So to just undertake an event like SubOptic requires an enormous amount of voluntary commitment from scores of people in the industry – we do not say lightly “ORGANISED FOR THE INDUSTRY BY

THE INDUSTRY” when we talk about SubOptic.

We are always worried that because of cost reductions in the industry and the unpredictable nature of the business cycle, we will not be able to replicate this approach at future events. Up till now this fear has not been fulfilled and I am happy to say that a Host has come forward for our next event SubOptic 2016 and with the abstract submission numbers we have recently seen, the industry still finds SubOptic an attractive place to present at. In fact the number of abstracts submitted

has remained remarkably similar over the recent conference cycles.

We are also undertaking some interim activity, such as the preparation of model contracts with guidelines and we have recently sponsored the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum to try to increase our support in the educational sector.

What do not we do so well!

Well we have been talking within our Executive Committee about restructuring SubOptic for the past 6 years. This has been driven by a desire to improve the efficiency of transfer between the Host and Programme Committee for a conference cycle and those for the next cycle, and to provide additional professional support to the voluntary commitment provided by industry. It has also however been driven by a desire to allow SubOptic to become more the voice that Fiona Beck talks about and which Jean Devos criticises us for not being.

Why has there been no fundamental change!

For several reasons, one is a lack of consensus within the EC about what becoming a voice for the industry means. Jean Devos makes it sound so easy, but bodies like the UN itself show how difficult it is to organise collective action in many areas. There are good commercial reasons why some decisions are not made in a

collegiate fashion and in a body like ours, which has members who are competitors or whose aspirations are not matched, but also operates on an informal basis, this is not unsurprising.

Some of our EC Members just wish the focus to be on organising the best possible conference and perhaps providing some educational support, whilst others wish the organisation to become more ambitious.

We are also as described earlier an almost entirely voluntary organisation, which comes together for one unifying activity, the SubOptic event itself. We are light, low cost and to undertake a significant voice role would require significant additional expenditure and a much more complex structure. To significantly change our role

means making a fundamental change to the organisation.

Perhaps however there is also another reason outside of our organisation.

Most if not all the members of the EC are also members of another organisation, the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), established in 1958. This body which has extended its membership to include operators, equipment suppliers and governments (The UK Government has recently joined) now has 140+ members across the globe.

This organisation is championing many of the recommendations from the ROGUCCI report and has been undertaking many of the functions that Jean Devos outlines as relevant to SubOptic, principally looking at ways that increase the security of the global network. This has involved work on helping to implement the fundamental aims of UNCLOS, working with governments to provide security by implementing cable corridors and numerous other initiatives in this area, including some of the difficulties with permitting.

ICPC restructured themselves a number of years ago to provide a tiered organisation, based around members, an executive committee and an ICPC Ltd organisation, with annual Plenary Meetings. This structure, which took them time and effort to achieve, allows them with their extended membership to take initiatives across a wide range of areas.

This article is not a promo for ICPC, but it is worth viewing their website at www. iscpc.org to see the breadth and depth of their organisation.

What ICPC focuses on however is security and maintenance of undersea plant. They take no interest in any of the commercial strategies such as market drivers, financing or business initiatives or the technological network or transmission drivers, which help to move our industry forward – The bread and butter of SubOptic.

So how could SubOptic move forward!

My number one thought is that if ICPC is doing a good job in supporting and implementing the findings of ROGUCCI, we should not try to duplicate such activities. This will only lead to confusion, duplication and failure. Support may be a different matter and educational support may be the most important thing here.

In my opinion SubOptic should not lose sight of what it does well – organising and holding the best conference event in the

world - provided the industry is still committed to the model of “Organised For the industry by the Industry” this is our main raison d’être.

We can however make improvements in its organisation. At the moment when a new Host and Programme Committee is appointed there is precious little in the way of a handover from the previous ones. Our Constitution makes provision for a handover and continuing support, but because of its informal nature, it does not work. A more disciplined approach covering not only the handover but also continuing support during the event cycle, involving a slightly restructured EC and perhaps the setting up of a low cost SubOptic Ltd, may be a way forward.

We continue to take initiatives in the educational arena to drive home the message of how important the global network is to the world economy.

But perhaps more importantly we work formally with ICPC to see how our

two organisations, which have much in common, can work and support one another. What does each organisation bring to the party and how can they be best co-ordinated.

Who knows at the end there could even be a common organisational structure, which brings the best from each organisation?

So when we do get to SubOptic 2020, it is the message that is the most important, not the organisation that is delivering it, provided it is embedded in the industry and has its support.

That way beckons the revolution!

John Horne has been involved with telecommunications networks for nearly 40 years, most of the time in the international field. He joined British Telecom in 1964 and first became involved in submarine networks in 1969, initially in a project implementation role on systems such as CANTAT2 and TELPAL and then in planning. In the early 1980’s he was responsible as Technology Manager for BT’s initial optical fibre systems, UK-Belgium 5 and TAT8. During the latter part of his career in BT, John was responsible for the implementation of BT’s International Transmission Centres and worked on the planning and implementation of several multi-national global projects.

John’s involvement with SubOptic started with the first conference in 1986, where he presented a paper on the branching potential for optical fibre systems. He was a Vice-Chairman of the Papers Committee for SubOptic 2001 and has been Secretary to the SubOptic EC since then. John is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the UK’s Institution of Engineering Technology and holds a Diploma in Management Studies from Middlesex University.