WHERE IN THE WORLD

ARE THOSE PESKY CABLESHIPS?

BY REBECCA SPENCE

Congratulations to all the crew and team members who were able to celebrate the completion of Southern Cross NEXT wet plant at the beginning of May! It has been a long road and Provisional Acceptance has finally arrived! The final branching unit and final splices were accomplished by the Ile de Sein and Ile de Re over the last couple months, which accounts for a large majority of the tracking data coming from the South Pacific since March. The Rene Descartes also accounted for activity in the South Pacific as it worked to install Picot 2 in New Caledonia.

Several regions saw a decrease in activity since March as Activity

Figure 1: Rene Descartes landing Picot 2 in New Caledonia in the Americas increased to 21 percent from 16 percent. EMEA decreased from 46 percent to 43 percent, AustralAsia fell from 27 percent to 18, and the Transpacific decreased from 10 percent to 7 percent. The wet plants of 2Africa (also known as SHARP by Vodafone), Equiano, and Peace have kept the EMEA region bustling with activity.

With the exception of Equiano which seems to be about halfway through wet plant based on the number of landings it has completed, several systems will continue to announce landings around the continent and continue the trend seen with

Africa as a focal point of subsea cable installation activity over the coming months.

Another congratulations is due to Global Marine who received a Platinum level award by the

UK Met office. According to their announcement in Early April, the award for their submarine cable installation vessel the Cable Retriev-

er, was in recognition of the high standard of weather observations undertaken voluntarily at sea last year.

In cableship fleet news, the Ile de Molene went back into the water after the Remontowa Shiprepair Yard completed the dock works for her rebuild. ASN announced her addition to their cableship fleet in June of 2021, and the transformation is almost complete, so keep an eye out for an announcement by ASN!

Reach out if you have cableship news to share or tag us on social media @subtelforum! Until next time, stay safe! STF

REBECCA SPENCE is the Project Manager from Submarine Telecoms Forum. Rebecca possessed more than 10 years’ experience as an analyst and database manager, including for the small business division of prominent government contractor, General Dynamics IT. She is a regular contributor to SubTel Forum Magazine and is based out of Hillsborough, North Carolina USA.