The change of knowledge within the blink of an eye fixed has grow to be a given in a lot of the world – and but we not often pause to consider what makes all of it attainable: a posh international community of cables within the depths of the ocean that silently connects us.
Within the trendy info age, undersea cables have grow to be a powerful basis for digital connectivity, Tomas Lamanauskas, Deputy Secretary-Basic of the Worldwide Telecommunication Union (ITU) has advised UN Information, forward of a worldwide summit on the difficulty starting in Portugal on Monday.
Trillions of {dollars} in transactions within the international financial system and the continual accessibility of knowledge takes place via it.
“About 99 per cent of the worldwide web site visitors goes via submarine cables. Even the dialog you and I are having proper now’s carried via these cables,” he mentioned.
“Folks know the seen entry factors, reminiscent of cell networks, satellites, and glued web, however the underlying infrastructure that helps them is the huge community of submarine cables — our digital highways.”
These invisible highways, consisting of fiber-optic wires connecting touchdown factors, are positioned a whole lot of metres beneath the floor of the ocean by cable-laying ships.
Mr. Lamanauskas underscored that as our reliance on digital connectivity continues to develop, strengthening the resilience of those cables and creating collective methods have grow to be more and more vital.
This will probably be a key focus of the Second Worldwide Submarine Cable Resilience Summit, going down on Monday and Tuesday in Porto, Portugal.
Speedy information transmission
Connecting completely different elements of the world via communication cables just isn’t a brand new thought. In 1850, England and France have been linked for the primary time by an undersea telegraph cable.
Since then, expertise has steadily advanced, from telegraph companies to phone networks, and now to high-speed web carried by fiber-optic cables. Right this moment, a whole lot of terabits of knowledge cross per second via these cables laid alongside the seabed.
Throughout the globe, there are over 500 industrial submarine cables, linking continents, markets, and households.
Comparatively skinny and roughly the width of a backyard hose, these cables stretch for round 1.7 million kilometres – lengthy sufficient to wrap across the Earth a number of occasions.
To put them, the seabed is surveyed to search out routes with fewer dangers and fewer influence on the atmosphere. Then, particular ships unroll massive reels of fibre-optic cable onto the ocean ground.
Shut-up of submarine cable being wound onto industrial reels. The Second Worldwide Submarine Cable Resilience Summit will happen on 2–3 February 2026 in Porto, Portugal.
Cable site visitors disrupted
With these cables more and more forming the spine of the worldwide financial system, any disruption in information move can grow to be immediately noticeable, impacting financial actions, emergency and tech companies, safety techniques, and web entry for billions worldwide.
There are sometimes 150 to 200 cable incidents every year, averaging about three to 4 per week.
The ITU senior official recalled that “lately, there have been fairly a number of high-profile incidents, from the Crimson Sea to West and East Africa.
“For instance, in 2024, submarine cable incidents within the Crimson Sea disrupted an estimated 25 per cent of knowledge site visitors between Europe and Asia.”
Outages in cable connectivity might end result from earthquakes, underwater landslides, and volcanic eruptions. Nevertheless, statistics present that round 80 per cent of incidents are brought on by human exercise, from ship anchors or fishing trawlers damaging cables.
Each millisecond issues
Mr. Lamanauskas cited the instance of Tonga, which has skilled three main disruptions since 2019, brought on by an earthquake, volcanic eruptions and improper anchoring. Due to the shortage of a various community in distant areas, when a cable is reduce, an unlimited territory can go offline.
“Think about your self and your whole group being offline for per week, unable to entry important companies like digital healthcare, entry to info, and training.”
“Think about the influence on inventory merchants in New York if even a millisecond delay happens resulting from cable congestion or a submarine cable incident. Each second issues.”
Repairing the invisible highways
Other than abrasion and pure put on and tear, “a portion of the cable infrastructure laid across the dot-com growth of 2000 is now reaching maturity, as these cables have been designed for a median 25-year lifespan,” he added.
DSG Lamanauskas defined that within the occasion of an incident, engineers are often shortly capable of determine the affected space and “the precise restore work itself just isn’t at all times essentially the most sophisticated piece. What’s typically extra complicated is securing all of the required permits and licenses, particularly when a number of or overlapping jurisdictions are concerned.”
Relying on the placement and scale of harm, the summoning of cable ships and the restore work can vary from days, weeks to months. In busy places, these ships are often shut by however reaching distant areas can take longer. In lots of international locations, the shortage of a transparent focus to handle these operational necessities provides to the problem.
Employee directing deployment of submarine cable at port. The Second Worldwide Submarine Cable Resilience Summit will happen on 2–3 February 2026 in Porto, Portugal.
Mr. Lamanauskas famous that laying new cables is usually a multi-year venture that takes a major period of time. “There’s in depth planning concerned, and it’s often pricey too. Whereas shorter cables price hundreds of thousands, the longer ones can run into the a whole lot of hundreds of thousands.”
What’s ITU doing?
Because the UN company for digital applied sciences, ITU works to reinforce the resilience of world submarine cables via collaboration, normal setting, and technical steerage. Its priorities embrace creating resilient measures, streamlining upkeep and restore processes, and adopting extra sustainable practices.
“Over the past 40 years, the capability of those optical cables has been growing by 40 per cent yearly. It’s an exponential development which in flip powers the exponential development of the web,” Mr. Lamanauskas added.
Worldwide Submarine Cable Resilience Summit 2025, ITU Convention
Mr. Lamanauskas clarified that ITU isn’t an operational physique and doesn’t restore cables.
“As an alternative, we concentrate on creating the suitable enabling atmosphere by shortening allowing timelines, establishing clear factors of contact, elevating consciousness to forestall unintentional injury, and facilitating sooner repairs.”
As demand for connectivity and information surge with unprecedented pace, these efforts will play a key function in bolstering the muse for shared progress and shaping the way forward for the worldwide digital panorama.
