CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Stewart Ash, Dr. Steve Grubb, Doug Madory, Stephen Nielsen, Wayne Nielsen, Kevin G. Summers
Submarine Telecoms Forum magazine is published bimonthly by Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc., and is an independent commercial publication, serving as a freely accessible forum for professionals in industries connected with submarine optical fiber technologies and techniques. Submarine Telecoms Forum may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, in whole or in part, without the permission of the publishers.
Liability: while every care is taken in preparation of this publication, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information herein, or any errors which may occur in advertising or editorial content, or any consequence arising from any errors or omissions, and the editor reserves the right to edit any advertising or editorial material submitted for publication.
Contributions are welcomed. Please forward to the Managing Editor at editor@subtelforum.com.
Welcometo Issue 74, our Global Outlook edition.
Does light freeze when it gets too cold?
A frigid Polar Vortex held the US east coast in a stranglehold for a few days this month. Single Fahrenheit digits were seen as far south as the Carolinas, and wind chill estimates dropped to -20o in many locales. It was colder in Virginia than Anchorage, Alaska. It was so cold, you could toss a hot cup of coffee in the air and it would freeze before it hit the ground; at least that’s what the local weatherman videoed. The federal government and local businesses kept their employees home; we were told to stay indoors.
Being originally from the Midwest, we faced these kinds of extremes on a yearly basis. I remember 70 below zero one cold Michigan week during college. It was so cold we didn’t even cross country ski, not even with schnapps!
more exciting given the weather so far this winter season. I must admit that I am looking forward to some warming sun and green instead of the drab browns and greys. I guess I’m even looking forward to seeing a few old faces or two. I suspect my Aussie friends are looking forward to a break in the cooler, milder climate.
It’s all relative.
So as always, should you be attending PTC 2014, please come by our booth to say hello; and of course, save me a seat at the Mai Tai Bar.
Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc.
21495 Ridgetop Circle, Suite 201 Sterling, Virginia 20166, USA subtelforum.com
It reminds me of that scene from the 80s movie, Crocodile Dundee: “That’s not a knife. THAT’s a knife.”
In other words, it’s all relative.
Heading to Honolulu this year is a little
Alcatel-Lucent And Nextgen Group
Complete First Australian Field Trial Of 400G Data Transmission Over Live Network
Alcatel-Lucent to sell LGS Innovations LLC to Madison Dearborn Partners and CoVant
ASEAN To Focus On 700Mhz Harmonization, Undersea Cable Resilience
Australia Japan Cable Deploys Infinera Intelligent Transport Network China Unicom Expands North American Footprint with New Point of Presence in Seattle
Contract Awarded For Minch Broadband Cable
Convergence Targets West Africa Fibre Deals
Digicel Acquires Pan-Caribbean Fiber Assets
Globenet Completes Construction Of New Subsea Network Extension To Colombia
Hawaiki Secures US Landing Site; Signs Coastcom And Tillamook Lightwave For Infrastructure And Backhaul
ICPC: Call for Papers
ICPC Recommendation On The Proximity Of Wind Energy Installations And Submarine Cables
Emerald Networks Announces Fibre Infrastructure Agreement with Geo Networks
Even Odds For New Internet-Cable
Ocean Networks Selects Xtera For The Turnkey Supply Of The South America Pacific Link Submarine Cable System
Ocean Networks, Inc. Secures Mezzanine Funding For The Purpose Of Developing The South America Pacific Link (SAPL) Submarine Cable System
Orange To Sue NSA Over Underwater
Cable Hacking
Pacnet Upgrades Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable with Ciena
Reliance Globalcom Upgrades TransAtlantic Submarine Network with Ciena Rotterdam Subsea Cable Centre Set Up by NKT
Seacom Hunts In Africa
Senate To Explore Submarine Cable Security
Southern Cross To Add Another Terabit Using Ciena 100G
Submarine Cable Repair Will Take A Week
SubTel Forum Podcast - Episode 8: PTC’14
TE Connectivity SubCom Begins Survey Work On USA East Coast And Ireland’s West Coast For Emerald Networks’
Submarine Cable System “Emerald Express”
TE Connectivity Subcom Demonstrates Record 13 Tb/S Capacity Over 6,500 Km On Second Installation Of Next Generation Undersea Systems
Tech Firms Push to Control Web’s Pipes
Telmex, America Movil Launch AMX1
Submarine Cable System
Telstra Global Adds 100G To Asia Pac Unity Submarine Cable
TIM Brasil and Xtera Deploy 100G
Optical Network Over Challenging G.653
Dispersion Shifted Fiber in North East
Brazil
Tunneling a Cable to Martha’s Vineyard, 30 Feet at a Time
Turnbull Moves To Simplify Submarine Cable Approval Process
WFN Strategies to Exhibit at PTC 2014
Xtera's XWDM Paves the Way to 64
Terabit Optical Networking
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Global Outlook
Stephen nielsen
With the new year, we take another look at the global climate of the submarine telecoms industry. It’s been rough sailing the last few years, but opinions from the industry are leaning towards optimistic.
“If you look at 2011, 2012, 2013, it was very difficult because of credit markets and the global recession,” said Eric Handa, co-founder of AP Telecom. “But we believe that 2014 is poised to be a much better year by the mere fact that there is CAPEX (Capital Expenditure).”
For the first time in years, companies are putting real money into future assets, which means new system. Last year there were seven new systems. In the next year, there are 15 new systems planned and more than 20 in the following year.
According to Handa, this is a natural conclusion to over-taxing systems.
“There is a budgeted trend for more spending on network, because a lot of the networks that have been running for the last two-and-a-half/three years have been running very hot,” Handa said. “They’ve been running at anywhere from 85, 90 percent capacity. That’s obviously not sustainable.”
Systems
Announced
RFS
New systems means new business for most of the industry, but it may also mean the upgrades market may loseout. According to Handa, the time may have arrived where systems have reached the “diminishing margin of returns” scenario. If many systems have reached the limit of what upgrades can do for them, but not the limit of increasing demand for bandwidth, the only option left to system owners is additions to the system. An eventuality that is much needed, according the Handa.
“You can upgrade your network as much as you want, but it doesn’t create a new diverse path. It doesn’t
solve your problem of putting too much traffic on one network,” Handa said. “They (new cables) are diversity. They’re providing diverse paths. They’re providing a new backbone in mesh networks. They’re not traversing across the seabed floor. And they’re also offering diversity from a landing point perspective.”
With increasing global demand, there are also areas that are creating whole new systems. Many of those burgeoning markets are in areas like Africa. Another such area is Cambodia. There have been consistent increases in demand and it isn’t slowing.
SYSTEMS
ANNOUNCED
RFS
“The growth potential is enormous,” said Paul Blanche-Horgan, CEO of EZECOM, a leading provider to the Cambodian market. “Year on year we are seeing internet by 200% and that and even accelerate.”
“It is an exciting time to be in the ICT sector in an emerging market economy like Cambodia,” Blanche-Horgan said. New markets are rapidly increasing with the popularity of technology like smart phones that make internet common even in areas without home computers. This raises the question of where the money will be in the submarine telecoms industry in the next few years.
Until that time, happy New Year and best of luck in having a fruitful 2014.
Stephen Nielsen 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
STf Today Streaming @ pTc'14
Check out our new uStream channel at: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/subtel-forum Or on our site at: http://www.subtelforum.com/articles/streaming-coverage/
SubTel Forum will be live streaming the SubOptic Submarine Cable Workshop
“For Real? Buying
and Building New Undersea Systems
Naked!”
in Honolulu on Sunday, 19 January at 11:00 AM HAST / 21:00 GMT
SubTel Forum will be live streaming the Arctic Fibre Data Gathering Meeting in Honolulu on Tuesday, 21 January at 7:30 AM HAST / 17:30 GMT
recent Trends in Submarine cable System upgrades
Dr. Steve Grubb
Figure 1: Shared Mesh Protection (SMP) example for a hypothetical submarine cable network.
High capacity and cost effective upgrades of existing submarine fiber cables have always been of paramount importance to the submarine fiber carriers. The carriers have all made substantial investments in these cable systems, in some cases in excess of $1B US, and these cables support a service lifetime of 25 years. The effectiveness of submarine upgrades has taken on even more importance over the past few years, due to rapidly declining bandwidth pricing on all major submarine routes, increasing concerns regarding service availability and the requirement to offer new services rapidly in this highly competitive market. The submarine carriers are being forced to adopt new paradigms in this changing environment. Submarine upgrades now have to be done at higher capacities, lower cost per bit, more rapidly and at more frequent intervals. This can be achieved using next generation optical technology that performs at higher bit rites, and in architectures that allow faster restoration and provisioning.
Scaling Capacity
The fundamental optical technology behind submarine upgrades has experienced radical changes over the past several years. Most of the
submarine cable systems presently being upgraded were designed for 10 Gb/s wavelengths, typically running OOK or phase shift keying modulation formats. The fiber plant was also designed for these transmission formats. The submarine upgrade market has moved rapidly away from 10 Gb/s line side upgrades; first to 40 Gb/s and now to 100 Gb/s, which dominates the large majority of today’s submarine system upgrades. The technology currently being adopted for submarine upgrades is also almost universally coherent transmission technology. Coherent technology at 100 Gb/s provides the best answers for
all of the critical metrics for submarine upgrades including: higher system capacity, lower cost per bit of system transport, increased system density, lower power consumption per bit, and the scalability to meet future demands. Coherent technology readily allows the use of mixed modulation formats, so that the optimal modulation format (QPSK, BPSK, etc.) can be chosen to provide the most efficient solution for each specific route in a submarine network. Coherent technology also facilitates the use of flexible grid spacing (Nyquist WDM), which leads to higher system capacities and more flexible system architectures. Additionally,
coherent allows for increased tolerance to system impairments including chromatic dispersion (CD) which in turn allows greatly relaxed fiber repair rules and faster system restoration in the event of a CD change in the submarine cable. The elimination of fiber based banded dispersion compensation in many legacy systems, when upgraded with coherent transmission technology, has also resulted in a noticeable reduction in system latency. Coherent technology has greatly diminished the impact of transmission impairments, CD and Polarization Mode Dispersion, and the next generation of coherent processing offers reduction of nonlinear transmission penalties. In one field demonstration, a terrestrial link with extremely high Differential Group Delay of 250 picoseconds (ps) was shown to no longer be suitable for 2.5 Gb/s OOK transmission. However, it was able to be closed with 100G coherent technology due to its ability to electronically mitigate this extreme transmission impairment!
Coherent technology has also demonstrated the ability to upgrade legacy submarine fiber cable systems to many times their original design capacity. In one extreme example, a system that was originally designed for 20 Gb/s total capacity (8x2.5 Gb/s)
was demonstrated via a field trial to be upgradable to a total system capacity of 1 Tb/s with 100 Gb/s waves. This large multiple is made possible by coherent technology transponders that are configurable between multiple modulation formats, together with advances in forward error correction (FEC). Today’s 100 Gb/s coherent transponders are shipping with second generation FEC, soft-decision FEC (SDFEC), which provides an approximate 2.5 dB performance gain over the first generation coherent transponders that used hard-decision FEC (HD-FEC).
Coherent technology also allows for increased system capacity in the future through the use of higher order modulation formats, more effective coherent algorithms that reduce transmission penalties, further gains in SD-FEC, and the use of flexible grid super-channels to increase the bit rate and capacity in the future. In fact, 500 Gb/s super-channels are being deployed today to upgrade numerous submarine systems. Currently, coherent technology appears to be so widely accepted and favored that almost all new submarine fiber wet plant builds being proposed now employ next generation large area, positive dispersion fiber plants. These proposed builds will deploy the
new fiber without in-line dispersion compensation, and the chromatic dispersion that accumulates can be in excess of 200,000 ps/nm, a value that can only be electronically compensated by coherent technology transponders.
Enhanced Protection
Submarine carriers have also become more aware of the need to develop more resilient submarine networks in light of numerous disruptive events that have severely affected submarine cable systems over the past several years. The Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami which devastated Japan in March 2011 damaged about half of the submarine cables connecting Japan to the rest of the world. Similarly, the earthquake in the Taiwan Strait in 2006 caused damage to at least 8 major submarine cables. The submarine cables around Egypt have also been the subject of great concern, where a rogue ships anchor cut a major submarine cable in 2008, disrupting up to 70% of the internet traffic between Europe and Africa. An incident of sabotage also took place off the coast of Egypt in 2013 where 3 divers were apprehended while in the process of cutting Se-ME-WE-4, a major submarine cable in the region. All of these events have highlighted the vulnerability of submarine cable to natural and
Figure 2: Integration of Terrestrial and Submarine networks into a unified global mesh network with common network management
manmade catastrophic events. Many carriers have made submarine network resiliency a key requirement, and they are planning network architectures and employing upgrade transmission gear that provides rapid protection and/or restoration in the event of cable disruption.
The traditional approach to protection in submarine networks, for those that offer protection, has been 1:1 protection. However, this approach is expensive as it is necessary to reserve 100% of the pre-configured protection capacity, and its capacity is limited to single failure scenarios. The ideal technology for submarine
network protection would offer three fundamental capabilities. First, it would offer multi-failure recovery for better survivability. Secondary and even tertiary protection scenarios can also be pre-planned, depending on the degree of availability desired. Second, the recovery would ideally be fast –with the 50 ms gold standard to allow for deterministic performance. Lastly, the network would allow an intelligent sharing of backup resources for better network-wide economics. These ideal protection requirements are achievable in Shared Mesh Protection (SMP), which has been gaining significant traction both in standards based bodies
(G.SMP/G.803.3 and G.ODUSMP) and in the marketplace. Submarine carriers, by deploying appropriate HW accelerated based SMP based line cards, would be able to offer protected submarine services that will have the potential to switch within 50 ms and can cover multiple failure scenarios. Possibilities for multiple protection scenarios using shared mesh protection (SMP) are illustrated in Figure 1 for a hypothetical submarine network.
Faster Service Delivery
Submarine carriers have also been challenged with offering faster provisioning times in keeping with expectations of the increasingly competitive global bandwidth market. Carriers who can provision new high speed services on submarine cables more rapidly and flexibly tend to win more business than their slower, less flexible competitors. It is now possible to add new services without sending field personnel to the submarine landing sites to install new line cards and/or change fiber connections, leading to increased service velocity as well as lower OpEx costs. By proper bandwidth planning, it is possible to have latent, pre-tested bandwidth available on a submarine system that can be activated purely through
network management software. The integration of submarine and terrestrial transport equipment has facilitated this trend. Elimination of unnecessary back to back transponders, or even regeneration at submarine landing sites leads to not only lower CapEx costs of the total system, but also operational simplicity as well as increased service velocity by being able to add the client service optics directly at the end customer site. Direct optical POP to POP connectivity is also becoming a factor in submarine upgrades. This integrated, global network approach allows a common network management software interface to control the entire global network, and facilitates rapid provisioning and protection/ restoration, as illustrated in Figure 2.
There has also been increasing discussion amongst submarine service providers to decouple the submarine wet plant suppliers from the SLTE dry plant providers when considering a new submarine cable build. This enables the service providers to adopt a “best of breed” supplier strategy where the provider is able to offer capacity upgrades faster, at more frequent intervals, and at the lowest cost per bit of transport. They are also able insure that they have access to the latest generation of transport gear (e.g. 100G
and beyond coherent line cards) that are state of the art. The service providers can also choose upgrade transport gear that best integrates with their terrestrial networks and provides the optimized, lowest cost, and most scalable overall global network solution.
Summary
We have all witnessed a major paradigm shift in submarine cable upgrades over the past few years. This shift has been driven by decreasing submarine bandwidth pricing, the need for faster protection/ restoration times for disaster recovery, and the need to more rapidly deliver new services to customers. Submarine cable carriers have begun to widen their choices of suppliers for capacity upgrades, and have begun the process of integrating their separate submarine and terrestrial networks into global networks in order to more effectively compete in today’s marketplace. Technology has also assisted in this paradigm shift, with the development of coherent 100G transponders increasing the bit rate of upgrade transponders by a factor of 10 in just a few years. This technology is more scalable, flexible, is able to operate in multiple modulation formats, and is able to compensate for a dramatically wider range of
transmission impairments. Indeed, coherent technology at 100 Gb/s and beyond seems well poised to drive the next generations of submarine cable upgrades as well as influence the design and direction of new submarine cable builds for some time to come.
Dr. Grubb is currently a Fellow at Infinera, responsible for next generation technologies and product directions in submarine networks. He has previously held positions at Corvis, SDL, and AT&T/ Lucent Bell Laboratories. He led R&D that was responsible for the first commercial deployment of Raman amplification in a network, and developed several novel high power fiber lasers and amplifiers. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Cornell University. He has held the position of IEEE Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Grubb is an author on over 90 publications and conference presentations and is an inventor on over 70 issued U.S. patents.
State of Subsea
The industry is at a transformational time in the submarine cable space, and there is a need to come together and exchange ideas and insights and work together toward cultivating a culture of innovation and collaboration across the entire sector. The goal of APTelecom’s ‘State of Subsea’ DGM event series is to establish a forum for all industry players, and to improve the communication within the submarine cable industry for new models and ideas as a younger generation moves into the space.
Submarine cables add resilience but paths Still matter
Last month, I had the honor of opening the second day of the Submarine Networks World 2013 conference at the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. Using a handful of recent examples, I demonstrated that, while new submarine cables certainly contribute to physical diversity and hence increased Internet resiliency, cables alone do not necessarily reduce traffic latency. As we explained in our recent blog, when trying to understand performance across the global Internet, paths matter.
We say that paths matter because while there are many tools for monitoring endto-end latencies of Internet connections, understanding the path that traffic takes through the global Internet is vital to understanding the root cause of performance issues and in designing an effective Internet strategy for your target markets.
As I told the audience in Singapore, Renesys is not in the submarine cable industry. We are an Internet measurement company. Our unique ability to detail submarine cable events (failures and activations) comes as a fortunate side-effect of our extensive data sets and the capabilities we have built on top of them for observing
structural changes in the global Internet. These changes can dramatically impact performance, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. The most significant events are often those involving submarine cables.
Submarine cables are carefully engineered to minimize cost and
latency. However, Internet routing–which determines the actual paths taken by traffic–plays by a different set of rules. Though the shortest physical path may be across a submarine cable, routing policy may steer the traffic a different way. When routing policy does align with physical infrastructure, latencies can drop dramatically, as in
the following two examples.
Tonga
In August, Tonga, an island nation of 100,000 people, got its first submarine cable, allowing it to forgo expensive and slow Internet satellite service. How expensive? In the telecom business, prices are typically quoted in terms of
Mbps per Month (megabits per second per month or MM). In the competitive US market, this cost can be below $3/ MM. For satellite service in the Pacific, the cost is around $3,000/MM — 1,000 times more expensive. How slow? Take a look at the following graphic that uses our latency measurements to illustrate Tonga’s Internet connectivity transition from satellite (600ms minimum) to
submarine cable (40ms minimum), capturing the cable activation that occurred at 05:56 UTC on 5 August 2013.
I can only imagine that August 6th must have been a new day for Internet users in Tonga. While the business case of future cable projects faces distinct challenges (discussed later), Pacific islands are in the category the submarine cable industry calls “thin routes” — submarine cable connections that provide vital connectivity to people on remote islands but can only deliver a “thin” amount of demand, and hence, are unlikely to make much (if any) money. The World Bank and the Asia Development Bank funded the Tonga cable and other similar submarine cable construction on humanitarian grounds.
ACE cable activation in Sierra Leone
Funded in part by the World Bank, another recent cable activation was France Telecom’s ACE (“Africa Coast to Europe”) cable serving West Africa. With an additional US$15 million contributed by the government of China, the ACE cable came ashore in Sierra Leone and was activated in February in a ceremony attended by the country’s president. His Minister
of Information and Communications called it a “landmark day in Sierra Leone.”
This summer, an online publication in Sierra Leone questioned why Internet service from SierraTel, the country’s incumbent, to various government offices, including the Ministry of Information and Communications, was still slow. While there can be many reasons for slow Internet access, we can see that SierraTel may not be getting the maximum benefit of the new cable. In the diagram below, we compare the
activations of SierraTel and Afcom, the “largest Internet and IP service provider in Sierra Leone” according to their website.
The downward shifts in both latency distributions mark the moments SierraTel (13:00 UTC, 21 February 2013) and Afcom (19:06 UTC, 20 February 2013) began routing traffic over the ACE cable. However, while parts of Western Europe can reach Afcom in less than 100ms, it can take over three times longer to reach SierraTel. Unfortunately, the in-bound path to
SierraTel is still via the same satellite services in use prior to the ACE cable activiation. This scenario suggests SierraTel is potentially misconfigured; asymmetrically using satellite for inbound traffic and submarine cable for outbound traffic. This is similar to the misconfiguration we saw in Cuba when ETECSA activated the ALBA1 submarine cable in January, but this error was corrected a couple days later. We suspect a similar situation with SierraTel, which would explain
the reports of continued slow Internet access.
Submarine Cable Industry Feeling the Pinch
Advances in the state of the art of submarine cable technologies, such as Coherent technology, are enabling upgrades to existing cables that can increase capacity by orders of magnitude, such as the upgrade of NTT’s Pacific Crossing-1 to 100G this summer.
At the same time that submarine cables are increasing in capacity, the growth of international bandwidth demand has been slowing due to advancements in distributed content delivery networks. These networks position content closer
to users for faster delivery, reducing the need to reach overseas hosting centers via submarine cables.
An increase in supply combined with a decrease in demand makes it much more difficult to build a business case for a new submarine cable project. However, with this year’s revelations concerning National Security Agency (NSA) interception, a new motivating factor for future cables may be emerging: national sovereignty.
Following the news that her email correspondence had been intercepted by the NSA, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has announced plans to bypass United States for Brazilian traffic destined for other countries (Brazil, like most Latin American countries,
connects to the global Internet through submarine cables that land in Miami, Florida).
This crisis couldn’t have come at a better time for Angola Cables, which is one of four efforts working to build a cable (pictured above) across the south Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Africa. When complete, Angola Cables’ South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) will connect the two Portuguese speaking countries, offering Brazil another path to reach the global Internet by way of Africa, side-stepping the United States.
National sovereignty may be the trump card that overcomes the one-two punch of increasing capacity and decreasing demand, and justify the installation of submarine cables to serve political interests. Brazil has come to realize that Internet paths matter, albeit for security as opposed to performance issues.
Hair-pinning
I concluded my talk in Singapore with a few examples of Internet hair-pinning in the Far East. Hair-pinning is the phenomenon in which Internet traffic gets unnecessarily routed through a faraway city, a common occurrence that clearly illustrates that the Internet is not
designed for efficiency or performance. In other words, you cannot simply use Telegeography’s excellent Submarine Cable Map in the same way you might use a street map for determining likely Internet traffic paths. The following example traceroute illustrates an extreme case of hair-pinning, where traffic from Singapore to another part of Singapore first traveled through Los Angeles, California, over 13,000 kilometers away!
This seemingly strange behavior does not reflect just routing inefficiencies or misconfigurations of minor players of the Internet. Rather, it is the direct result of the fact that Tata and NTT, two of the largest global networks in the
world, do not interconnect in (presumably for business reasons) instead elect to exchange traffic part of the world in California. arrangement impacts the customers both providers, dramatically latencies for traffic between locations the Far East.
Nearly every provider in has idiosyncrasies like these. They can make global Internet performance very difficult to understand, let alone monitor. It’s Renesys’ business to help our customers understand these issues so they can effectively plan their Internet strategy and monitor the delivery of their services, and it is why we say paths matter.
Doug Madory is a Senior Analyst at Renesys where he works on global Internet infrastructure analysis projects. He has a special interest in mapping the logical Internet to the physical (submarine and terrestrial cables) and in 2013 identified the activation of several significant cables: the ALBA-1 submarine cable serving Cuba, the Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) terrestrial cable connecting Europe to the Middle East, and the International Terrestrial Cable (ITC) connecting India and Bangladesh. Doug holds computer engineering degrees from the University of Virginia and Dartmouth College.
Article courtesy of
reliability Is King
celebrating 10 years of apollo
Apollo North & South (Source: Apollo)
When considering high reliability and low fault rates for systems across the Atlantic, there is no better example than Apollo. Originally conceived as part of Cable & Wireless (C&W) global network, it is now owned by Apollo Submarine Cable System Ltd1 (a Joint venture between Vodafone UK and Alcatel-Lucent). This company operates two independent trans-Atlantic submarine cable systems, both supplied by AlcatelLucent Submarine Networks (ASN)2. Last year Apollo celebrated its tenth anniversary, in that period, the systems have only experienced two submarine cable faults, one was due to man-made external aggression and the other was due to natural seabed activity; a record that it’s Managing Director, Richard Elliott, is rightly proud of.
A fault history for each cable of one repair every ten years is not just the envy of all the competing trans-Atlantic cables but virtually every submarine cable owner, around the world, as the global industry average is on the order of one fault every 2-2½ years. Of course, such a low fault rate is not the product of serendipity; it is the outcome of key business and engineering decisions made during the course of the design development, installation and operation of the system. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Richard and some members of the team responsible for building Apollo to try and determine why they had been so successful in avoiding system faults and others had been less so. This article is a summary of those discussions.
Apollo is a Super Wholesale supplier of capacity, selling complete wavelengths (λ) to leading telecommunications and internet companies between London, New York, Paris and Washington D.C. This capacity is provided over two independent submarine systems; Apollo North, 6,200km between Bude, UK and Brookhaven, USA; and Apollo South 6,500km between Lannion, France and Manasquan, USA. Both of these systems went into service in February 2003.
Each system contains four fibre pairs and had an initial design capacity for each fibre pair of 80λ x 10Gbit/s. In 2012, Apollo introduced 40Gbit/s technology to the systems and is currently rolling out 100Gbit/s technology which will be available in Q1 2014.
Business Decisions
The planning for Apollo coincided with the end of the industry boom and by the time the marine survey was underway the owners were aware that six new competing systems
had already been or were being built across the Atlantic. These were AC-1 (1999), AC-2 [formerly Yellow] (2000), FA-1 North/South [formerly Flag Atlantic] (2001), Hibernia Atlantic [formerly 360 Atlantic] (2001), TAT14 (2001) and TGN (2001). It was also clear, at that time that the growth in demand for capacity across the Atlantic had been greatly over estimated3. This meant that once Apollo went into service there would be stiff competition for customers; that would drive down unit prices, and fill rates were likely to be much slower than had been previously hoped. These significant factors informed the business model and in consequence some key business assumptions were made. Firstly, that Apollo would have to differentiate itself from the competition. Secondly, as positive cash flow was likely to take a long time to materialise, lifetime costing was far more important than lowest capital cost and or speed to market. Based on these assumptions, Apollo set the strategic objectives of designing for high
3. D
reliability and minimising lifetime cost. This meant identifying and mitigating the risk of external aggression, while ensuring that the location of a fault, if and when one did occur, could be identified accurately and repaired quickly. This approach to the project, when compared to less robust solutions, meant that they were unlikely to obtain minimum market pricing for the system supply and so took a clear decision to make additional capital investment if and when such investments could be shown to be justified in order to meet the project objectives.
A key element in implementing this strategy was to carefully consider the contracting model to be adopted for the supply contract. They chose to pursue a negotiated contract rather than the more traditional competitive tender approach. In so doing it was judged that the ensuing collaborative relationship would be more conducive to meeting the project objectives than the more adversarial relationship that often emerges from a competitive tender. In a competitive tender, the successful supplier tends to be more focused on retrieval of margin given away to win the work than delivering the best solution possible. It was felt that a collaborative approach would allow for improvements to be made in the design of the system during the term of the supply contract rather than the supplier sticking rigidly to and only delivering the contract Scope of Work. It appears that this collaborative approach was to pay significant dividends, particularly in the Permitting and Cable Route Engineering (CRE) processes.
Permitting
Under the supply contract, Apollo adopted an approach of placing the responsibility for obtaining all permits with ASN; not just the normal operational permits for marine works, but also the Permits-in-Principle (PiPs) for the cable systems themselves. These PiPs had to be obtained in the name of Apollo’s local entities in France, the UK, and the USA, and included all environmental permits, concessions, public and private rights of way across the seabed and on land; as well as the construction permits for three new cable landing stations.
As is the case with virtually all submarine cable projects, the permitting process was on the critical path for Apollo, and thus fundamental to its timely implementation. The complexity of US permitting procedures and the relative slowness of the French permitting processes had to be taken into account. To complete this work effectively, Apollo and ASN developed a highly collaborative approach to the multitude of permitting tasks, focusing their energies on the shared objectives. According to Roy Carryer, ASN’s Permitting and Environment Director:
“This team-based approach was key to the success of the permitting work. The setting up of a Permits Working Group as part of the project management structure, and participation by both ASN and Apollo in the many meetings with public authorities, especially in the USA, were major contributory factors in meeting the deadlines.”
Colin Richards with a section of SPDA cable (Source Apollo)
The central permitting team was reinforced by the local expertise of several subcontractors in France the UK and the USA. The complexity of the work on the rights of way in the US also required separate law firms to be hired in New York and New Jersey.
It appears that the Apollo project can be held up as a good example of how to manage the complexity of US permitting for submarine cables. The work done by the Permits Working Group illustrates the difficulties that arise when obtaining, multiple authorisations, “noobjections” and clearances from a range of public authorities at four different levels of government: federal, state, county and municipal and how they can be overcome effectively.
At Manasquan NJ, the permitting process was the primary factor in the selection of the landing point for Apollo South. Almost all public land, and much private land, nominally suitable for a landing point in Manasquan and adjoining boroughs was, and still is, enrolled in the State’s Green Acres Program. Under this program there is a presumption against most forms of development. Permits to land submarine cables in such areas, if they can be obtained at all, have to pass through a highly onerous permitting process which could have seriously affected the project schedule. Given this difficulty, the permitting and marine teams collaborated to find a suitable area of coastal land excluded from the Green Acres Program, finally identifying a privately owned plot and successfully concluding an Agreement for its use.
The Manasquan landing for Apollo was
reviewed and permitted by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) at the time when DEP was overseeing the drafting and adoption of its Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Rules which, perhaps uniquely among US states, include standard requirements for submarine cable projects. These cover such matters as stakeholder consultations, routeing, burial depth, cable crossings, and future monitoring. Earlier systems landing in New Jersey had been subject to significant conflicts between cable project developers and a pro-active fishing community worried about areas of seabed becoming effectively “out of bounds” to trawling and clam dredging. The DEP brought together Apollo / ASN and other cable developers with representatives of the fishing industry, and public officials, to negotiate the standard requirements in the CZM Rules that are still in place today. Roy Carryer believes that;
“Codifying the installation requirements in this way has allowed Apollo and the New Jersey fishing industry to co-exist with no incidents over the 10 years since Apollo was installed, and will also benefit the landing of future systems in the State”
In France, the project required Concessions to occupy public land from two neighbouring départements which had to be negotiated separately, and for which formal environmental impact studies had to be prepared. Obtaining these Concessions was subject to the normal lengthy and complex consultation, stakeholder engagement and public inquiry processes. It was further complicated not only by the intervention of
the politically influential fishing industry, but also by the fact that the land route crossed an area owned and protected by the Conservatoire du Littoral, a body devoted to conservation of the coastline, with whom a formal agreement had to be negotiated.
Cable Route Engineering
Apollo was able to call on the vast experience of the C&W Network Services (NS) engineering group4 to assist them in meeting the project objectives. One of the main roles of C&W NS was to manage and contribute its experience and expertise to the CRE process, whilst working in close cooperation with the ASN team.
CRE is generally defined as the process of ensuring the physical security of the submarine system from natural and manmade hazards through route selection, slack allocation, cable type (including armour) choice, and the use of industry-standard cable burial and protection practices. Furthermore, it includes the use of trawlresistant designs for all seafloor housings (repeaters, equalisers and joints) installed in waters that may reasonably be expected to be fished over the design life of the system. In addition, CRE considers the viability of areas identified for the placement of repeaters and equalisers, relative to third party assets such as pipelines and other cables. It also addresses the engineering necessary for crossings of such third party assets and the technical elements of the associated crossing agreements that need to be negotiated. The
usual starting point for CRE is a Desk Top Study (DTS).
The contents of a DTS can vary significantly, depending on the level of investment that the project is prepared to make. As a minimum, a DTS can be some lines on a chart and a quick internet search; at the other end of the scale it will include detailed threat identification and analysis through publicly available data. This will include site visits to potential landing sites, and meetings with local authorities and other interested parties. In addition, a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) could also be conducted. The DTS for Apollo was a collaborative effort between ASN and C&W NS and, in line with Apollo’s established project strategy, the level of investment was at the higher end of this scale.
The potential threats to submarine cables can be divided into natural phenomena and man-made interventions. The vast majority of faults occur on the continental shelves, in water depths of <200m; in these depths the dominant causes of faults are man-made external aggression (fishing gear, anchors, dredging and other sea bed activities). Although natural hazards (earthquakes, seismic activity, tsunamis, slumping, turbidity currents storm surges and ice damage) do occur in shallow water they are in the minority. Natural hazard faults tend to be most significant in water depth >1000m. According to a 2007 study5, around 80% of all cable faults worldwide are caused by man-made external aggression and over 60% of these faults are due to fishing gear.
5. M.E. Kordahi et al
Trans-Atlantic routes are relatively benign when considering natural hazards. The greater risks are man-made, on the wide European and American continental shelves, where intense fishing of various kinds poses significant threats to a cable.
The main outcomes of the DTS were; identification of possible landing sites, selection of routes to be surveyed, a comprehensive Marine Survey / Burial Assessment Survey (BAS) specification, permitting requirements and a detailed risk analysis of external aggression threats. In particular, a detailed study of fishing activities along the preliminary cable routes was undertaken.
For the Apollo North route, on the UK continental shelf, Apollo engaged the services of NetWork Services (Fishing Liaison and Marine Consultancy); its representative, Colin Richards was given the freedom to consult with the fishing industry in order to provide a fishing activity/risk assessment report. Colin has over 30 years’ experience as a fisherman and fishing gear technologist, he has an indepth understanding of fishing practices, trawl gear technology and manufacture, the fishing grounds, the people and the politics. To supplement his experience, the fishing industry was consulted about the proposed route. Consultation took place directly with the fishing vessel skippers, in order to obtain their first-hand, unbiased, “straight talking” views on the proposed route. This feedback was amalgamated with Colin’s own views to arrive at the report’s conclusions and provide recommendations for the way forward. The
report detailed the type of fishing activity and bollard pull of the type of vessels that fished in the vicinity of the proposed route. One of the report’s recommendations was an alteration to the proposed route in the Bristol Channel/eastern Celtic Sea. This was to avoid hard ground where cable burial may have been difficult to achieve and where fishing activity by vessels operating with heavy demersal trawl gear was taking place. This recommendation was adopted and the route was altered accordingly.
Similar risk assessments were carried out through extensive liaison with the fishing communities that worked on the French and USA continental shelves. On the French continental shelf, heavy demersal trawling and scallop fishing were the major concerns, while on the US shelf clam dredging is the major risk. The fishing technique for clam dredging entails scraping off a layer of the sea bed, and fishermen return to the same location time and time again. In order to obtain the necessary permit, in this area, the State of New Jersey now requires, under its CZM Rules, a minimum burial depth of 1.2m for all cables. This requirement is due in large part to the standards set by Apollo.
The preliminary CRE process, within the DTS, addressed the threats of fishing activity though the route selected to surveyed, preliminary choice of cable design (type and quantities), and identifying the area of seabed requiring BAS. Finally, it identified the third party cables that would cross the chosen routes. For both routes, including Out Of Service (OOS) and “uncharted cables”, there were a total of 121 individual
coming To a wall near you
6.
crossings. For each of these crossings the owners had to be identified and negotiations initiated for either clearing an OOS cable or putting in place a crossing agreement. This was no small task!
Marine Survey
The marine survey and BAS took place during 2001, at this time ASN was able to take of advantage of the relatively new Makai PLAN™ software package to assist with the CRE6. This software works in the Geomedia GIS (Geographical Information System) environment, allowing most forms of electronic and digitised data to be pulled into a computer workspace as geo-referenced objects. This allows the route planner to visualise these data sets on the computer screen and then simply “pick and click” to create and design a suitable cable route. The route position points are automatically saved, easily exported as a Route Position List (RPL) and converted into a Straight Line Diagram (SLD) for cable manufacture. This speeds up the CRE process and reduces the risk of human errors that are more prevalent with manual data input techniques. As a result, important CRE decisions were made quicker, and with greater accuracy. One major benefit of the electronic planning process is that it allowed many previously unusable attributes within traditional survey data sets to be used for the first time. The most significant of these, was the use of multi-beam surveying data obtained from the shallow and deep water surveys. The multi-beam data contained large amounts
of seabed soundings; these were gridded and converted into a Digital Terrain Model (DTM), an enhanced 3D visualisation image of the sea bed, showing gradients and seabed composition (roughness) in the parts of the routes that had a particularly complex topography. These 3D images can be turned, skewed, zoomed into and out of; they can also be illuminated from different angles.
This DTM gave the route planners the tools to assess, with far greater confidence, risk areas along the potential cable route.
The results of marine survey and BAS were assessed jointly by the Apollo’s and ASN’s engineering teams, working closely to bring to bear their enormous collective experience. Thanks to Makai PLAN™ significant route development was possible to avoid previously unidentified sea bed features, one of which was the extent of a nuclear waste dumping ground off the USA continental shelf. Also, considerable time and effort was taken over deep water routing, to avoid sea bed currents that could abrade Lightweight (LW) cables.
The BAS established that the sea bed on the route of Apollo South off Lannion was very hard and cable burial would be virtually impossible. Therefore, negotiations began with the French authorities to try and establish a ‘No Fishing’ corridor for the cable within territorial waters. To achieve this, the authorities required a further survey to be carried out to demonstrate that no better protection of the cable could be achieved by moving the route to a different location. In addition, they required that a post installation survey be carried to confirm that the cable
had not moved and the burial depth had been maintained. This survey was successfully completed in August 2006, so thanks to this additional investment, agreement for the ‘No Fishing’ zone was obtained.
The survey and BAS data were compared with the fishing risk reports, from this analysis it was determined that the system would be armoured down to the 2000m contour and buried down to the 1,500m contour on each shelf edge. In areas where burial was planned, a conservative approach was taken to cable selection, taking into account water depth, the burial depth expected and the identified risks of current and future external aggression. The final CRE specified cable types and quantities, slack allowances, burial requirements, crossing engineering and the detailed installation methodology. This included planning the location of all interlay splices and deep water (>4000m) Final Splices (F/S) for each system. For a F/S, an additional twice depth of water cable length has to be added to the system. Because of this a deep water F/S adds significant additional cost but is far less vulnerable to external aggression than a shallow water F/S.
Submerged plant
The cable design chosen for Apollo was ASN’s OALC-4; on the continental shelves five different armour types were specified, these were Double Armour Heavy (DAH), Double Armour Medium (DAM), Single Armour Heavy (SAH), Single Armour Light (SAL) and for that section of the UK continental shelf where the risk of external
M Lawrence, S O’Bow-Hove & M Jonkergouw Advance Terrain Mapping and High Performance Ploughing (2004)
aggression was considered at its highest, a special cable, Special Purpose Double Armour, (SPDA) with enhanced impact and crush resistance was specified. The SPDA cable was designed by ASN specifically for especially harsh environments and is the strongest cable design of its type in existence. To date Apollo remains the only system to have incorporated SPDA. In deep water i.e. beyond the 2,000m contour, Lightweight Protected (LWP) and LW were specified.
The ASN repeaters were built using 32nm wideband optical amplifiers and the repeater spacing was chosen to give a design capability of 80λ x 10Gbits/s per fibre pair. This design capacity was significantly greater than any of the systems Apollo would compete with. Also, meeting the objective of minimum lifetime costs, the design of the ASN repeater offered some other unique benefits. Firstly, it has a glanded bulkhead; this means it prevents water ingress to the repeater housing, if there is a cable break close to the repeater. Without this design feature, expensive repeaters would be written-off, if such a fault were to occur. This feature allowed the quantity of spare repeaters to be optimised. Secondly, the ASN repeater design has the most comprehensive supervisory and monitoring system in the market. This enables monitoring of the repeaters’ health from the Cable Landing Stations, while in service, so that any problems can be identified early and, if necessary, a planned replacement can be arranged, with capacity customers being warned well in advance. Also, the supervisory system is able to add
to the accuracy of system fault location techniques, thus reducing down time and the cost of any repairs. Fortunately, due to the reliability of the product and the low fault rate, Apollo has not had to call on these particular technical benefits.
Marine Installation
The majority of the installation of the systems took place in 2002, although the shore end landing at Bude took place in November 2001 in order to avoid any disruption to the tourist season. Due to New Jersey permitting requirements, both US shore ends where installed through Horizontal Directional Drill conduits. The vast majority of the system was installed by ASN’s Ile de Class cable ships.
The vessels selected for the installation were, at the time, virtually new purpose built cable ships. They are large, dynamically positioned, stern working vessels with high bollard pull capability. Their design was a significant step forward from the previous generation of installation vessels.
These vessels all operated using the fully integrated software package, Makai Lay™ which linked all installation operations. This laying software co-ordinates the instructions between the ship’s navigation, dynamic positioning and cable machinery, as well as carrying out data logging for all cable laying, ploughing and ROV operations. Perhaps most significantly, it also provided the critical link between the installation operations and the CRE, as it imported, in a seamless and therefore error-free manner, the data from Makai PLAN™. This ensured that data files that contained the details of the final, agreed routes were used during the installation.
On each ship, the GPS controlled Dynamic Positioning system drives two main propellers, four tunnel thrusters and one azimuth thruster giving them sub-meter vessel station keeping ability. The stable hull design and huge power availability gives the vessels the ability to continue cable laying operations through worse weather and seastate conditions than had been previously possible. These attributes allowed critical plough launch and recovery operations to be performed in conditions up to and including sea-state 7, without incurring any risk of damage to the cable and or plough. Due to their stern working only configuration, with sheltered back decks, surface laying operations were able to continue through marginal weather conditions up to and including force 9. With the use of Makai Lay™, the laying accuracy and slack control for deep water surface laying was optimised to avoid suspension and or loops.
For plough burial on the continental shelves
the ships were equipped with the then new generation SMD HD3 plough. The vessels high bollard pull (up to 150 tonnes), meant that they could easily deliver the maximum tow tensions of 130 tonnes, that could be tolerated by HD3 plough.
These HD3 ploughs, weigh between 26 – 33 tonnes and their capability is far beyond the previous generation of the then standard, 12 tonne ploughs. These were limited to a tow tension of 50 tonnes and could achieve a maximum burial depth of 1.1m. The HD3 ploughs have a “standard” burial depth of 2.4m, with an ability to increase this to 3m in very soft soils. It is also possible to bury down to 3m in stiffer/harder seabed, by adding an extension “boot” to the bottom of the plough share. The incorporation of a “rock tooth” allowed some plough penetration in areas where a rocky seabed predominated and no suitable sediment cover was available. By scratching the rock tooth into the surface of such a sea bed, the cable is placed underneath a type of “berm” that is formed along the scratch line by the
fractured rocks and debris. This provides an increased level of protection for the cable than if surface laid. It also has an additional benefit, in that the berm provides a better sonar target for fishermen working in that area, to identify and avoid.
Armed with these tools ASN were able to optimise the target burial depth, in line with the Burial Protection Index philosophy7. The approach adopted for ploughing was to achieve the maximum possible burial depths within the safe working limits of the plough and vessel. Burial rates were scheduled at 15km/day although on a number of occasions, in order to achieve best burial, progress rates were reduced to as little as 3km/day. Despite this, no significant project down-time was incurred due to plough damage or maintenance and the 1.2m burial requirement was achieved over the entire US shelf for both routes. Achieved burial depths on the European shelves ranged from 1.7m in soft sediment to 0.1m in soft rock. Plough burial down to the 1,500m contour was achieved on all four shelf breaks, as planned.
The plough burial program was supplemented by a comprehensive Post Lay Inspection and Burial (PLIB) program on all routes. The PLIB confirmed achieved burial depths, and conducted post lay burial at planned locations such as cable crossings. It also included remedial burial where the planned depth of plough burial had not been achieved. For both systems, a total length of 1,316km was planned to be plough buried
7. M Jonkergouw Industry Developments in Burial Assessment Surveying (BAS) (2001)
and only 1.3% of this required any remedial burial work8.
Awareness and Notifications
Having invested significant capital in reducing, wherever possible, the potential for cable damage, from external aggression, through a comprehensive CRE program and professionally executed installation operations, Apollo also took steps to ensure that the presence of the cable was known, to competing sea bed users. This included ensuring that the cable routes were published on official charts as soon as was practicable and that Notices to Mariners (NM) were published in a timely manner. For Apollo this required liaison with the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office (UKHO); Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine (SHOM) in France; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Data Management Architecture (DMA) in the USA and the Canadian Hydrographic Service (CHS). The UKHO was first made aware of the planned Apollo routes in 2000, once the DTS routing had been finalised. The first NMs were published in May 2002 to coincide with survey operations and the final ‘as laid’ routes were published on relevant charts on 17th March 2003. When approached about information for this article, UKHO’s Geographic Manager for the Americas responded:
“I whole heartedly concur with the theme of your article to highlight early and regular liaison with charting authorities as it is very important in many aspects…”
8. ibid
SMD HD3 Cable
Plough (Source: Alcatel-Lucent)
Submarine Cables
The Handbook of Law and Policy
Submarine Cables The Handbook of Law and Policy
Edited by Douglas R. Burnett, Robert C. Beckman, and Tara M. Davenport
Submarine fiber optic cables are critical communications infrastructure for States around the world. They are laid on the seabed, are often no bigger than a garden hose, and transmit immense amounts of data across oceans. These cables are the backbone of the internet and phone services and underpin core State interests, such as the finance sector, shipping, commerce and banking industries. Without the capacity to transmit and receive data via submarine cables, the economic security of States would be severely compromised. Despite the fact that 95 per cent of all data and telecommunications between States are transmitted via submarine cables, there is little understanding of how these cables operate. As a result some States have developed policies and laws that undermine the integrity of international
Cables
Edited by Douglas R. Burnett , Robert C. Beckman, and Tara M. Davenport
telecommunications systems. Submarine Cables: The Handbook of Law and Policy provides a one-stop-shop of essential information relating to the international governance of submarine cables. The Handbook is a unique collaboration between international lawyers and experts from the submarine cable industry. It provides a practical insight into the law and policy issues that affect the protection of submarine cables, as well as the laying, maintenance and operation of such cables. In addition, the law and policy issues in relation to other special purpose cables, such as power cables, marine scientific research cables, military cables, and offshore energy cables, are also addressed.
More information and details at www.brill.com/submarine-cables
Discount code: 50601 (please mention this code for discount)
Discount applies to individual orders only and no additional discounts apply.
TaBle of ConTenTs
ntroduction - Why Submarine Cables? Douglas Burnett, Tara Davenport, Robert Beckman
PART I: BACKGROUND
Chapter 1 - The Development of Submarine Cables. Stewart Ash
Chapter 2 - The Submarine Cable Industry: How Does it Work? Mick Green
PART II: INTERNATIONAL LAW ON SUBMARINE CABLES
Chapter 3 – Overview of the International Legal Regime Governing Submarine Cables. Douglas Burnett, Tara Davenport, Robert Beckman
PART III: CABLE OPERATIONS - LAW AND PRACTICE
Chapter 4 – The Planning and Surveying of Submarine Cable Routes. Graham Evans, Monique
Page
Chapter 5 – The Manufacture and Laying of Submarine Cables. Keith Ford-Ramsden, Tara Davenport
Chapter 6 – Submarine Cable Repair and Maintenance. Keith Ford-Ramsden, Douglas Burnett
Chapter 7 – The Relationship between Submarine Cables and the Marine Environment. Lionel Carter
Chapter 8 – Out-of-Service Submarine Cables. Douglas Burnett
PART IV: PROTECTING CABLESHIPS AND SUBMARINE CABLES
Chapter 9 – Protecting Cableships Engaged in Cable Operations. Mick Green, Douglas Burnett
Chapter 10 – Submarine Cables and Natural Hazards. Lionel Carter
Chapter 11 – Protecting Submarine Cables from Competing Uses. Bob Wargo, Tara Davenport
Chapter 12 – Protecting Submarine Cables from Intentional Damage: The Security Gap. Robert Beckman
PART V: SPECIAL PURPOSE SUBMARINE CABLES
Chapter 13 – Power Cables. Malcolm Eccles, Joska Ferencz, Douglas Burnett
Chapter 14 – Marine Scientific Research Cables. Lionel Carter, Alfred H.A. Soons
Chapter 15 – Military Cables. J. Ashley Roach
Chapter 16 - Submarine Cables and Offshore Energy. Wayne Nielsen, Tara Davenport
PART VI: APPENDICES AND KEYWORD INDEX
Appendix 1 - Timeline of the Submarine Cable Industry
Appendix 2 - Overview of the Major Submarine
System Suppliers (1850 –2012)
Submarine fiber optic cables are critical communications infrastructure for States around the world. They are laid on the seabed, are often no bigger than a garden hose, and transmit immense amounts of data across oceans. These cables are the backbone of the internet and phone services and underpin core State interests, such as the finance sector, shipping, commerce and banking industries. Without the capacity to transmit and receive data via submarine cables, the economic security of States would be severely compromised. Despite the fact that 95 per cent of all data and telecommunications between States are transmitted via submarine cables, there is little understanding of how these cables operate. As a result some States have developed policies and laws that undermine the integrity of international
Appendix 3 - Excerpts of Most Relevant Treaty
Provisions
Keyword Index
telecommunications systems. Submarine Cables: The Handbook of Law and Policy provides a one-stop-shop of essential information relating to the international governance of submarine cables. The Handbook is a unique collaboration between international lawyers and experts from the submarine cable industry. It provides a practical insight into the law and policy issues that affect the protection of submarine cables, as well as the laying, maintenance and operation of such cables. In addition, the law and policy issues in relation to other special purpose cables, such as power cables, marine scientific research cables, military cables, and offshore energy cables, are also addressed.
information and details at www.brill.com/submarine-cables
In addition to the charting authorities, ongoing liaison with organisations, that were identified during the project to have continued interest in the Apollo cable routes, were built into the company’s operating procedures.
For example, NetWork Services continues to maintain an up to date and thorough understanding of vessel movements and fishing trends relevant to the Apollo cable system. This understanding allows them to be employed in on-going fishing liaison and cable awareness activities directed at the skippers that operate in the vicinity of the Apollo cable system. On-going liaison consists of monitoring of fishing activity in the vicinity of the Apollo cable system, regular Apollo Cable Awareness Chart distribution, in addition to the Kingfisher Information Service9, and port visits to meet directly with relevant fishing industry representatives and vessel skippers, both in the UK and abroad.
According to Colin Richards, Apollo is seen as a success story by the fishermen, as they appreciate the consideration and efforts made to avoid their fishing grounds in the planning stages. Static gear fishermen also appreciated the efforts made to minimise disruption to their fishing activities and livelihoods during the installation process. Consulting with static gear fishermen from the outset of the project was a key factor in securing good relations with them. Fishermen appreciate the regular personal contact and the up to date Cable Awareness Chart information that Apollo 9. http://www.seafish.org/industry-support/fishing/kingfisher-information-services
provides, which ensures that fishermen are kept aware of the position of the cable, encouraging them to avoid fishing directly over it, where possible, and highlighting the safety risk and the potential consequences of any interaction.
Tracking Potential Aggressors
Once Apollo went into service, air surveillance was carried out to monitor fishing activity in the vicinity of the cable with Colin Richards flying as “observer” during these flights. These operations helped to identify individual foreign vessels fishing in the vicinity of the cable, particularly in the deep water west of Longitude 8 00W and on the edge of the continental shelf. In recent years these flights have be replaced by AIS and VMS surveillance methods. The mandatory introduction of ECDIS to vessels over 500tons, in the next few years, is expected to be of further assistance in this area.
Operations & Maintenance (O & M)
Although the Apollo fault history is excellent, Richard and his team remain vigilant in protecting their systems and being ready to respond to cable faults, if required. The systems are covered by the Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement and submerged plant spares are distributed in strategic locations, in order to be able to respond quickly and effectively to any future system fault. This represents a significant cost in the company’s annual O & M budget and you may be forgiven for thinking that economies could be made. However, Richard Elliott explains:
“Although Apollo has an enviable reliability record we are not complacent. We can’t afford to be. All this company does is provide north Atlantic capacity. If a cable is down our business is temporarily out of action. This is unique on the route, all our competitors have other revenue sources, only Apollo is 100% dependent on trans-Atlantic capacity. We have to really care about it.”
Conclusions
Apollo has been rewarded for the work done and the investment made, by two systems that have only suffered one fault each in 10 years. In 2004, Apollo North suffered an seabed induced cable fault in 5,000m of water and in 2005; the Apollo South cable suffered damage by fishing gear, in 300m of water, off Lannion, well outside territorial waters. With marine repairs costing on the order of US$0.5–1.0M a time, a fault history like Apollo’s can make a significant difference to the company’s O & M costs. However, perhaps more significant, is the fact that the incidence of cable faults is inversely proportional to customer loyalty and, for a company like Apollo, customer loyalty is essential.
In many cases the work done by Apollo and ASN was, at the time, leading edge. Today the CRE and installation techniques used are more readily available. However, in order to be as successful as Apollo, a project needs a purchaser that is prepared to make the necessary up-front financial investment and to give the supplier the time necessary to design and implement the system properly.
It also needs a supplier with the experience and capability to deliver the necessary services and technology, but perhaps more importantly a supplier that is prepared to deliver the best available solution to its customer, without being bound rigidly to the contract scope of work.
The benefits of early and ongoing consultation with third parties and in particular the fishing industry cannot be over stated. To quote Colin Richards:
“In my opinion Apollo, was a well-planned and well installed subsea cable system and it has been well managed from the beginning. Potential fishing risks were always a high priority during the planning stage and fishing liaison has been an integral and valued element from initial marine works through to the present day”.
As a consultant I regularly stress to my clients, when they are planning a submarine cable project, that it is a long term investment and that they should be looking at lifetime costs as opposed to focusing on the short term capital cost of procurement. Also, that speed to market is not necessarily a good thing, especially if it means compromising on critical engineering decisions. Time should be taken to fully evaluate the risks and to carry out detailed cost benefit analysis on major design issues. There are few examples where it can be seen that greater investment at the front end has saved money over the life time of the project. Unfortunately, there are too many examples of when the converse is true.
When it comes to planning and implementing a submarine cable system the old adage,
“You can have it Right or you can have it Now but you can’t have it Right Now” is, I believe, a good one. To date, the Apollo systems appear to be a shining example of this philosophy.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank, Richard Elliott, Maja Summers, Nick Smith, Sasha O’Bow-Hove, Roy Carryer, Julian Clark, Colin Richards, John Kincey and Nigel Fisher for their insights and views that were invaluable in preparing this article.
Stewart Ash’s career in the Submarine Cables industry spans more than 40 years, he has held senior management positions with STC Submarine Cables (now Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks), Cable & Wireless Marine and Global Marine Systems Limited. While with GMSL he was, for 5 years, Chairman of the UJ Consortium. Since 2005 he has been a consultant, working independently and an in association with leading industry consultants Pioneer Consulting, Red Penguin Associates, Walker Newman and WFN Strategies, providing commercial and technical support to clients in the Telecoms and Oil & Gas sectors.
Apart from his regular Back Reflection articles, he has authored a number of articles and conference papers on a wide range of industry issues. In 2000, he edited and co-wrote “Elektron to ‘e’ Commerce, a brief history of the first 150 years of the submarine cable industry. He also wrote Chapter 1 “The Development of Submarine Cables” for the recently published “Submarine Cables The Handbook of Law and Policy” sponsored by ICPC.
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Submarine cable protection Zones
Australia’s submarine communications cables carry the bulk of our international voice and data traffic and are a vital component of our national infrastructure, linking Australia with other countries.
Submarine cables are vulnerable to damage and breakage, which can cause serious consequences for the flow of information to and from Australia. Cable damage can cause data loss, significant delays, and severe financial loss to businesses, cable owners and individuals who rely on communication links with other countries.
Submarine Cable Legislation
Because of the increasing importance of submarine cables, the Australian Government introduced legislation designed to protect our most critical submarine cables—the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Protection of Submarine Cables and Other Measures) Act 2005. When reading the legislation, it is advisable to consult the associated Explanatory Memorandum.
over submarine cables of national significance. Within these protection zones, activities that could damage submarine cables will be prohibited or restricted. Within protection zones, it is an offence to damage a submarine cable, to engage in prohibited activities, or to contravene a restriction. Penalties include fines of up to $66,000 and/or ten years imprisonment for an individual, or up to $330,000 for a corporation.
The legislation also provides for the ACMA to issue permits for the installation of submarine cables either:
a. within submarine cable protection zones, or
b. outside of submarine cable protection zones (other than in coastal waters)
The legislation allows the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the ACMA) to declare submarine cable protection zones in Australian waters
If the ACMA declares a protection zone, the location of that zone will be noted on relevant hydrographic charts and details of the prohibited or restricted activities will be circulated widely to affected parties.
Application Charges For Installation Permits
Application For A Protection Zone
Permit
The application fee for a PZ permit is $2,215 (GST exempt). The fee is based on cost recovery for the ACMA’s administration of the application.
Application For A Non-Protection Zone Permit And Expert Consultancy Charge
The application charge for a non-PZ permit is $8,176 (GST exempt), or $7,388 (GST exempt) where the application is linked to a protection zone permit. Applications for a non-PZ permit must also include an expert consultancy charge of $25,000 (GST exempt).
The application fees are based on cost recovery for the ACMA’s administration of the application. Where a non-PZ permit is linked to a PZ permit application, a reduced application fee applies reflecting the slightly lower administrative expenses involved when processing linked applications.
The expert consultancy charge is to cover the cost of any required expert consultant assessment. Any unspent portion of the charge may be refundable, and the charge will only be used if a situation arises where the ACMA considers independent expert advice is needed. A further charge may be levied if the costs of an expert consultant exceed the expert consultancy charge.
Payment Options
The application fees and expert consultancy charge are payable by either by a cheque to the Collector of Public Moneys, Australian Communications and Media Authority or direct deposit to the ACMA.
For direct deposit, prior to lodging an application contact the ACMA’s Finance Section via email at remittances@acma.
gov.au or telephone 02 6219 5521 to arrange for a Tax Invoice to be sent to you.
Payments can then be made by EFT, BPay or Credit Card (depending on payment amount) by following the instructions on the Tax Invoice.
Declaring, Varying Or Revoking A Protection Zone
The ACMA has developed an information guide Requesting a protection zone be declared, varied or revoked (PDF 440 kb or Word 459 kb). This guide provides an overview of the ACMA’s approach to declaring, varying or revoking a
protection zone under Schedule 3A of the Act. It should assist in preparing a submission requesting the ACMA to declare, vary or revoke a protection zone. The ACMA may be contacted for further information about the process.
Costs Of Declaring, Varying Or Revoking A Protection Zone
An applicant for a new protection zone must pay a $195,000 deposit to the ACMA for the expenses to be incurred by the ACMA in relation to an application
to declare a protection zone. Likewise, a person who makes an application to vary or revoke an existing protection zone must pay a $143,000 deposit to the ACMA for the expenses to be incurred by the ACMA.
The ACMA charges $197 per hour for the activities of ACMA staff in relation to an application. The ACMA directly recovers external costs, including but not limited to, advertising, venue hire, catering, travel expenses and consultation costs. These costs are taken from a paid deposit, with
any remainder refunded or outstanding charge billed to an applicant.
Payment Options
Payment can be made either by a cheque payable to the Collector of Public Moneys, Australian Communications and Media Authority or a direct deposit to the ACMA. For direct deposit, contact the ACMA’s Finance Section via email at remittances@acma.gov.au or telephone 02 6219 5521 prior to lodging the application submission to arrange for a Tax Invoice to be sent to you. Payments can then be made by Electronic Funds Transfer or BPay by following the instructions on the Tax Invoice.
Protection Zones Around Submarine Cables Of National Significance
Perth Protection Zone
In September 2007, the ACMA made a declaration for a submarine cable protection zone off the coast of Perth, which has been in effect since 1 February 2008. This protection zone is around a cable that is regarded as nationally significant—the SEA-ME-WE3 cable, which links Australia to South East Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe. The Perth Protection Zone extends from City Beach to 51 nautical miles offshore and
covers the area up to one nautical mile either side of the SEA-ME-WE3 cable.
For further details about the Perth Protection Zone, including information about activities that are prohibited or restricted in the zone, go to the WA protection zone page.
Sydney Protection Zones
In July 2007, the ACMA declared two submarine cable protection zones off the Sydney coast which have been in effect since 1 October 2007. The protection zones set out in the declarations have been developed around two cables that are regarded as nationally significant:
• the Southern Cross Cable—which links Australia’s communications network with New Zealand, Fiji and the United States, and
of the Australia Japan Cable and Southern Cross cable, including the area between these two cables; and
• the Southern Sydney Protection Zone extending from Tamarama and Clovelly beaches and extending 30 nautical miles off shore covering the southern branches of the Australia Japan Cable and Southern Cross cables, including the area between these two cables.
For further details about the NSW protection zone, including information about activities that are prohibited or restricted in the zones, go to the NSW protection zone page.
Memorandum Of Understanding
• the Australia Japan Cable—which links Australia with Guam, Japan and Asia
The two Sydney protection zones are as follows:
• the Northern Sydney Protection Zone extending from Narrabeen beach to 40 nautical miles off shore covering northern branches
The ACMA and the Department of Defence signed a Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] (PDF, 196 kb) on 22 December 2008, to address concerns about possible damage to submarine cables in areas where submarine cable protection zones overlap with Defence practice areas. The MoU outlines acceptable parameters for Defence to conduct operations using explosives and confirms the obligation on cable operators to consult with Defence prior to accessing the practice areas.
The MoU includes the direction for firing ammunition, the use of inert practice rounds and the use of targets by Defence. The MoU also precludes the bottoming of submarines within protection zones and provides formal recognition by Defence of cable owners and operators right to access defence practice areas which are within, or overlap with, protection zones to undertake cable installation or maintenance.
The MoU confirms the ACMA’s obligation to consult with Defence regarding cable permit applications, before making or varying any protection zone declarations and changing prohibited conduct or restricted activity in protection zones overlapping with defence practice areas.
Any submarine cable owner or operator wishing to enter a Defence practice area should contact Ms Melissa Felton at Defence on telephone +61 (0)2 6266 8640 or by email melissa.felton@defence.gov.au.
Article courtesy of
Call for Papers
ICPC Plenary Meeting:
18-20 March 2014 inclusive
The next Plenary of the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) will be held in Dubai and its theme will be:
Managing Critical Infrastructure in a Changing Natural and Socio-Economic Environment
The ICPC therefore seeks presentations from interested parties that help address the commercial, legal, technical and operational challenges of protecting submarine cables. Topics could include, but are not limited to:
• Government & Industry working together
• Power cables: overcoming the challenges of depth and distance
• Science and Submarine Cables
• Choke points, route diversity and network resilience
• Legal & regulatory challenges & solutions
• Social, strategic and economic reliance on submarine cables
• New technologies and best practices for cable protection and maintenance
• Helping new players to understand the basics of cable protection
• Cables in new and extreme environments, e.g. Arctic, Rivers
• Avoiding intentional damage, e.g. Terrorism, Vandalism, Theft, Piracy
Presentations should be 25 minutes long including time for questions and, to ensure clarity when presented, should be formatted in accordance with the guidance that will be provided.
Prospective presenters are respectfully advised that papers that are overtly marketing a product or service will not be accepted, however two marketing slides can be included at the beginning or end of the presentation.
NB: Commercial exhibits may be displayed adjacent to the ICPC meeting room by special arrangement. Please contact the Secretary for further details.
Abstracts must be submitted via email to plenary@iscpc.org no later than 31 January 2014.
The ICPC will evaluate all submissions based on content and quality.
back reflection by Stewart ash
The History of the Ohm
In 2011 (Issue 59), Back Reflection recognised the immortalisation of Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry in the SI units for capacitance and inductance. However, 2014 marks the 160th anniversary of the death of the first and arguably the most well know scientist to have his name linked with an electrical standard, Georg Simon Ohm (1787 – 1854). This association began when Sir Charles Tilston Bright (1832 – 1888) and Josiah Latimer Clark (1822 – 1898) proposed the name “ohma” to be a unit of electromotive force in a paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science committee. This committee was set up in 1861 to establish standard electrical units, and was established in line with a recommendation in the report from the joint British Government and Atlantic Telegraph Company committee of
enquiry, set up to look into the failures of the Atlantic and Red Sea cables.
Resistance as a unit had been expressed as a velocity, based on the ten million metres of the earth quadrant (from which we get the original definition of the metre). This was explained by James Clark Maxwell (1831 – 1897) as “the velocity of a body which, in one second, travels the distance from the pole to the equator measured along the meridian of Paris”.
Charles Wheatstone (1802 – 1875) had proposed an arbitrary resistance standard in 1843 based on a foot of copper weighing 100 grains. Another arbitrary standard was based on one mile of copper wire 1/16 inch in diameter. In Europe, the arbitrary standard unit was based on Dr Werner von Siemens (1816 – 1892) mercury filled glass tube. A number of other
arbitrary standards also co-existed, with little or no correlation between any of them.
Clark and Bright’s paper entitled “Measurement of Electrical Quantities and Resistance” was presented to the British Association committee led by Professor William Thomson [Later Lord Kelvin] (1824 – 1907) and Maxwell, in Manchester in September 1861. It began:
“The Science of Electricity and the art of Telegraphy have both now arrived at a stage of progress at which it is necessary that universally received standards of electrical quantities and resistance should be adopted, in order that precise language and measurement may take the place of the empirical rules and general ideas now prevalent.”
By 1864, the British Association (BA) had created the “BA unit” of resistance,
an absolute unit based on the metregram-seconds (mgs) system. However, the mgs unit of resistance was far too small to be of practical use to telegraph engineers, so they recommend practical unit of resistance 107 bigger than the mgs unit. this may appear an arbitrary multiplier it meant that, adopted, one mile of standard telegraph copper wire would have a resistance of 10BA units. The British Association produced a standard resistor, made of wire, to realise this unit. A number of copies were made for sale and one of the first purchasers was Michael Faraday.
In 1868, the British Association for the Advancement of Science set up another committee for, “the selection and nomenclature dynamical and electrical units”. 1872, this committee recommended a change from the mgs system centimetre-gram-second (cgs) and changed the name of the to the “Ohm”, also introducing (Ω) as its symbol.
The first International Conference of Electricians in Paris, in 1881, accepted the British Associations definition
was agreed that the theoretical Ohm should be represented by the resistance offered to an unvarying current by a one cm2 column of mercury, 106cm even at the time it was definition was in error the column height 3mm. In consequence, inaccuracy, it did not favour with the purists quickly taken up by engineers as an excellent approximation and accurate for all practical purposes.
International Electrical Congress in Chicago, in 1893, corrected error and redefined Ohm as the resistance centigrade of a column mercury 106.3cm in length, uniform cross section of 14.4521gms. The to a cross section of definition was dubbed Ohm”. At the same “International Ampere” “International Volt” were also July 1894, Public Bill Congress making the the legal definition USA.
As measuring accuracy increased it became apparent that the 1893 conference had over specified the units and that the formula, Vint = Aint x Ωint did not work. This was resolved at the 1908 International conference in London. This was achieved by reducing the base units from three to two and redefining the International Volt as a derived unit.
With advances in electromagnetism and calculus it became apparent that a coherent absolute system of units could only include one electromagnetic base unit. The first such system was proposed by Giovanni Giorgi (1871 – 1950) in 1901; this used the Ohm as the additional base unit in the MetresKilograms-Seconds (MKS) system, and is referred to as the MKSΩ or Giorgi system. However, there was greater international support for use of the Ampere as the electromagnetic base unit. In 1935, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
adopted the Giorgi system with the Ampere replacing the Ohm, this is known as the MKSA system.
The International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) approved a new set of definitions for electrical units, based on the rationalized MKSA system, in 1946 (Resolution 2), and these were internationally adopted under the Metre Convention by the 9th General Conference of Weights and Measures in 1948.
Improvements in technology has opened up entirely new ways of making a resistance standard, and in 1988 the CIPM adopted as a conventional value “25,812.807 Ω for the von Klitzing constant, RK, that is to say, for the quotient of the Hall potential difference divided by current corresponding to the plateau i = 1 in the quantum Hall effect” (CIPM Recommendation 2, CI-1988). This value has been used by all standards laboratories since 1st
January 1990. While not a redefinition of the Ohm, the new standard permits enhanced precision in measuring it. I hope that clarifies the situation?
George Ohm died some years before his name was immortalized in the unit of electrical resistance and such great efforts were made to measure and standardize its value. However, his famous law; V = I x R remains, today; the best know formula that is taught in school science classes all over the world.
While modern fibre systems rely heavily on optical testing to locate submarine cable faults, the fact is that low current DC testing and the use of Ohms law is still a good and accurate method of locating a cable break and the only way of finding the position of a shunt fault with any accuracy, if the fibres are not broken.
Telecoms consulting of submarine cable systems for regional and trans-oceanic applications
January: Global Outlook
March: Finance & Legal
May: Subsea Capacity
July: Regional Systems
September: Offshore Energy
Conferences
PTC’14
19-22 January 2014
Honolulu, USA Website
ICPC Planery Meeting 18-20 March 2014
Dubai, UAE Website
November: System Upgrades
by Kevin G. Summers
Today I'm going to write about something a little off topic, something that is near and dear to my heart, but that is only peripherally related to the submarine cable industry. I'm writing about the massive changes in the publishing industry that have occured over the past few years.
Still with me?
First off, I want you to know that I've been teaching a creative writing class at libraries and the local community college since 2007. Back then, just 6 years ago, the long-standing tradition in the publishing world was that only hacks and nobodies self-published their work. It was also customary, even in the 21st century, that all manuscripts were typed in 12-pt Courier font and snail-mailed to the publisher. Only once your work was accepted was it appropriate to send a digital file. Fast forward to the present, and the world of publishing is undergoing a massive sea change. Authors like Hugh Howey, Jason Gurley and
Michael Bunker are proving that you don't need a third party publisher to be successful. Thanks in large part to devices like the Amazon Kindle and Apple's iPhone, readers can purchase books for virtually nothing, affording them the opportunity to try new authors.
Now, the teacher in me and the part of me that was first published through Pocket Books is somewhat skeptical. I have to say that the authors mentioned above all put a lot of time into their craft. Their manuscripts were not only well-written, they were well-edited. The stories they have to tell are compelling–with a hook, memorable characters, a beginning, a middle and an end. In other words, they are professionally crafted and not amateur drivel. And after the writing is done, they put in the hours required to publicize their work. These are some hard-working folks–writers that might have easily gone unnoticed by the traditional publishing industry.
Now, this isn't to say that traditional publishing is bad. They do a good job at what they do, which is identifying books and authors with the potential to sell a lot of copies. But some
stories take time to build and audience, and only through self-publishing can some of these authors slowly find that audience. I've observed this effect with some of my own writing. Stories that are long out of print are still selling as e-books, and I've been quite pleased with the sales numbers for my newer work. It's not quit-your-day-job money, but my audience is growing.
None of this would be possible, of course, without the internet and its reliable backbone of submarine cables. Just think of that as you are out there installing cable or selling bandwidth or developing upgrade technology. The work you do is making it possible for artists to live their dreams and change the world. We're all in this together afterall.
