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Welcome to Issue 80, our Global Outlook edition. The beginning of another new year brings new hope and optimism for the future. 2014 ended with a bang and a number of systems that have languished in a faux-CIF realm now seem to be well and truly moving ahead. A number of other submarine systems seem to be nearing the pad and we should see their launch sometime this year. We are certainly not in record setting heights, but the industry starts 2015 in a fair-ly healthy place, which bodes well for the future. Certainly, plenty of risks still exist – such as potential fi-nancial scarcity or niche mar-ket overbuild – but decade old mistakes still seem far in the distant memory. And the

divining experts appear to agree. A number of us will be mak-ing the annual sojourn this month to Oahu where a sig-nificant slice of the industry will meet, cajole, learn, and of course, golf. As in year’s past, I expect the submarine cable meetings to be packed and well attended. The golf bug that caught so many m i s s e d m e , and I learned a num-ber of c o n f e r -e n c e s ago to for-go Ko’olau, dubbed the

hardest course in America, for a tank and a regulator. So instead of swinging a club way too many times, you can probably find me strapped into my Scuba gear at the end of some tag line. So as always, should you be attending PTC 2015, please

come by our booth to say hel-lo; and of course, save me a seat at the Mai Tai Bar.

Wayne Nielsen is the Founder and Publisher of Submarine Telecoms Forum, and previously in 1991, founded and published “Soundings”, a print magazine developed for then BT Marine. In 1998, he founded and published for SAIC the magazine, “Real Time”, the industry’s first electronic magazine. He has written a number of industry papers and articles over the years, and is the author of two published novels, Semblance of Balance (2002, 2014) and Snake Dancer’s Song (2004).

+1.703.444.2527

wnielsen@subtelforum.com

4 ExordiumWayne Nielsen

8 Advertiser Index

10 News Now

18 Global Outlook: An OverviewKieran Clark

30 New Year: New OpportunitiesStephen Nielsen

38 Renewed Optimism:The Global Submarine Cable Market In 2014Michael Ruddy

54 Surfacing:An Interactive Visualization of the Undersea NetworkNicole Starosielski

In This Issue...66 Key Factors Contributing to Recycled System

ImplementationSteve Dawe

78 Leading the Development Of 100G and 400G Transmission TechnologyNing Jing, Wang Yanpu & Wang Ke

92 New Materials For the First Transatlantic CablesRichard Buchanan

106 Back ReflectionStewart Ash & Bill Burns

112 Advertiser’s CornerKristian Nielsen

116 CodaKevin G. Summers

Advertiser IndexHuawei Marine www.huaweimarine.com 90

OFS www.ofsoptics.com 26

Terabit Consulting www.terabitconsulting.com 52

WFN Strategies www.wfnstrategies.com 104

AAG Submarine Cable Cut Again

Alcatel-Lucent And Cinia Group To Deploy 1,100 km Undersea Cable System Linking Finland To Germany

Alcatel-Lucent Loss Narrows As Cost Cuts Boost Margins

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks Closes Optoplan Acquisition

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks Signs Agreement To Acquire Optoplan

Alcatel-Lucent To Build Tasman Global Access Undersea Cable System Linking New Zealand And Australia

Almanac Issue 12 is Available Now

APTelecom ‘State of Subsea’ Bangkok Receives Strong Reviews As Expert Event Series Makes Asian Debut

NewsNow

Brazil-to-Portugal Cable Shapes Up as Anti-NSA Case Study

Broadband Internet For Solomons In 2016

Brunei Key In New US Internet Link

BT Completes 250km Subsea Cable Project

Cable & Wireless Broadens Horizons With Columbus Deal

Cut Cables To Blame For Interruption To Dublin Web Services

Economic Boost As Hibernia Networks To Land Tier 1 Fibre Transatlantic Cable At Cork

Faster Internet Speeds By 2018 Under BIMP Project Seen

Fugro Commences The Cable Route Survey For AAE-1

NewsNow

Ghost ship Found Off Hawaii Near Rare Japanese Submarine Aircraft Carriers

Global Cloud Xchange Shortlists Three Vendors For India Sub-sea Cable

Globe Secures Operations License In Singapore

GlobeNet Deploys Infinera Intelligent Transport Network

Hawaiian Telcom Celebrates 50th Anniversary Of First Trans-Pacific Undersea Cable

Huawei Marine Second Generation Repeater and Branching Unit Achieves Successful Sea Trial in the Atlantic Ocean

ICPC Submarine Cables In The Sargasso Sea

Indonesia’s PGASCOM Selects Coriant To Expand Long Haul DWDM Network

Infinera And Telstra Successfully Demonstrate PM-8QAM Across Submarine Cable Between Japan And South Korea

Interchange Says PNG Internet Cable Upgrade Is On Course

Internet Service Remains Stable Amid SAT-3 Facility Cut

KT Vows To Build Global Internet Hub In Busan

KVH To Offer 10Gbps And 100Gbps Backhaul Service For Shima Cable Landing Station

Mobily Signs Supply Contract For Submarine Cable Network Project

NEC To Supply The World’s First Submarine Cable Across The South Atlantic

Orascom Telecom Media And Technology Holding Announces The Launch Of Service Of Its Submarine Cable (MENA)

NewsNow

Orascom Telecom Relinquishes Submarine Cables Licensing

Partners Group To Finance Seabras-1, The First Direct Subsea Fiber Optic Cable Between New York And S?o Paulo

Repair Of AAG Submarine Cable May Take A Month

Repair Of AAG Submarine Cable To Be Completed On January 23

SEA-ME-WE 3 Submarine Cable Reports Outage

Spark, Vodafone Plan Submarine Cable

STF #79 Is Available

STF Radio: PTC’15

Subsea Connectivity As Good As It’s Going To Get

SubTel Forum Is At PTC’15

TE Aims To Expand Number Of Submarine Cables To 21 By End Of 2016

Telebras Approves JV With Islalink For Submarine Cable

Telstra Buys Pacnet for $697 Million to Boost Asia Expansion

Telstra In Talks To Buy Undersea Cable Operator Pacnet

TM Warns Of Slow Internet Speeds Due To Fault In Submarine Cable

TM Wins SKR1M Submarine Broadband Cable Contract

U.N. Task Force Says New Ocean Telecom Cables Should Be ‘Green’

COME SEE US AT BOOTH 12

Global OutlookAn Overview

Kieran Clark

Welcome to SubTel Forum’s annual Global Outlook

issue. This month, we’ll take a brief look at how the industry performed around the world last year, and look ahead to 2015. The data used in this article is obtained from the public domain and is tracked by the ever evolving SubTel Forum database, where products like the Almanac, Cable Map, and the new bi-

monthly STF Supplement find their roots.

In our last Global Outlook edition, 19 systems were set to be ready for service in 2014, with nearly 30 systems for 2015. One year later, we can see that only 5 systems went into service in 2014, while the number of systems planned for 2015 has been cut to 21. Based on the information, our observation is that some

systems have been delayed a year, while others have died outright.

Overall, more than two-thirds of the systems under development for 2014 never made it into service.

Naturally, with a reduction in the number of systems that were supposed to enter service, we can expect a decrease in the

2014 has been a big year for contracting submarine cables which bodes well for a strong 2015 for implementation by suppliers. In the past year, while we have seen some very big orders such as for AEE1, SMW5 and Faster with others such as NCP and SEA-US are very close, 2014 saw an increasing interest by the Development Banks in submarine cables which means concessional and even grant funding can be available for emerging economies. Combine this with the serious innovation in the recycling of cables with schemes to replace not just terminal equipment but repeaters on cables to enhance capacity and we see two complementary activities which offer the potential for a great boost in connectivity for smaller nations such as in the Pacific to replicate massive stimulation in traffic seen by those already with cables. 2015 should see more island nations able to be a more effective part of the e-commerce world.

-John HibbardCEO, Hibbard Consulting Pty Ltd and President, Pacific Telecommunications Council 2009-2012

19  

29  

6  5  

21  

14  

2014   2015   2016  

Announced  System  RFS  Jan  2014  vs  Jan  2015  

Jan-­‐14   Jan-­‐15  

total kilometers of cable being added; taking into account the decline in systems ready for service in 2014, there is an obvious correlation between systems RFS and kilometers of fiber being added around the world. This time last year, nearly 150,000 kilometers of cable were set to be ready for service in 2014. As a result of several systems no longer under development, that number was cut by just over 100,000 kilometers. Delayed

systems cut that number even more, resulting in the length of new cable being added in 2014 totaling only 28,332 kilometers. Overall, 2014 has seen a decrease in a little under 120,000 kilometers of proposed cable since last year’s issue. While 2015 does not see quite as drastic a change just yet, there has already been a reduction of just over 65,000 kilometers of proposed cable since last year’s issue.

As shown in the third graph, the majority of new activity seems to be centered on the Pacific, ostensibly fueled by emerging markets in Southeast Asia. However, it does appear that the string of defunct systems is more or less across the board and not focused on any one specific region. This global trend indicates a global predicament, and

It has been noted that in the emerging tech economy, there will be 80-100 net new jobs created for every 1,000 broadband connections over the next decade. We are witnessing the emergence of another cycle of hyper-growth in demand driven by globally connected applications that rely on network connectivity to function. This, coupled with the ever-increasing appetite for faster speeds, creates opportunities and at the same time presents challenges for Service Providers to meet the growing demand. New submarine cable builds are increasingly difficult to finance on a standalone basis.

Hibernia Networks is very well positioned to capitalize on this cycle of growth - leveraging our investments in our new Trans-Atlantic cable system, our entirely new and enhanced footprint in the United States, our internally developed CDNcapabilities, as well as the acquisitions we’ve made that have enabled us to strengthen our portfolio of services which now includes Ethernet, IP and Video Services.

-Omar AltajiCCO of Hibernia Networks

0  

50000  

100000  

150000  

200000  

250000  

2014   2015   2016  

Announce KMS Added By Year Jan 2014 vs Jan 2015

Jan-­‐14   Jan-­‐15  

not one localized on any one specific region. Some regions have suffered more than others, however.

Over the course of the last year, the Mediterranean region saw a slight increase in new system activity, but nearly every other region saw a decrease. The Polar region has suffered the most, having only one system remaining out of the three proposed a year ago. Even the Pacific region, which has seen a surge of activity in recent years, saw a twenty-one percent decrease in systems from this time last

year. Since our Regional Systems issue, the Atlantic has seen a bit of renewed interest, going from only 7 proposed systems to 11.

There are various reasons for this downward trend, some of which include; investors becoming increasingly more cautious, oversaturated regions or routes, and upgrades. It is very difficult for prospective cable owners to justify the cost of building and maintaining a system to investors when faced with stiff competition, especially in highly competitive regions.

Columbus Networks has made significant improvements to the region’s telecom infrastructure since our relatively modest beginnings in 2005. This includes ongoing investments for ex-panding network reach, further improving reliability and scal-ability in order to meet the broadband growth demands in the region. Besides our annual subsea network upgrades, such as 100 G wavelength technology currently being deployed, it also includes further extending our fiber network coverage from cable stations to city-centers, along with new inter-city fiber backbones and metro fiber networks. For instance, through our Lazus subsidiary, we are currently constructing a terrestrial backbone to connect Ecuador with our subsea gateways on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and have broken ground on metro fiber build out in Lima, Peru. Additionally, through our subsea joint venture with Cable & Wireless, we are currently activat-ing new capacity via a network upgrade on the Pan Americano subsea system enabling expanded connectivity into both Ecua-dor and Peru.

Future challenges We are honored to have received the Capacity Media annual award as the Best Wholesale Carrier in the Caribbean for 2013 and 2014. Nevertheless, we must continue to further invest in expanding our world class telecom infrastructure, and moreover, we also must move forward with introducing new innovative wholesale products and services in order to meet the evolving future requirements of our carrier and service provider customers.

-Paul ScottPresident & COO, Columbus Networks

Many regions, like the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, are simply oversaturated and have an excess of capacity, making a new system impractical from a business

standpoint. The ability to simply upgrade an existing system and greatly increase capacity for a fraction of the cost of building a new one is just one more reason

Medi  11%  

Atlan-c  23%  

Pacific  54%  

Indian  Ocean  4%  

Carribean  4%  

Mid  East  2%  

Polar  2%  

Systems  Announced  RFS  2014-­‐2016  By  Region  

Kieran Clark is an Analyst for Submarine Telecoms Forum. He joined the company in 2013 as a Broadcast Technician to provide support for live event video streaming. In 2014, Kieran was promoted

Forum publications. He has 4+ years of live production experience and has worked alongside some of the premier organizations in video web streaming.

to Analyst and is currently responsible for the research and maintenance that supports the SubTel Forum International Submarine Cable Database; his analysis is featured in almost the entire array of SubTel

Coherent Transport

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Long-term Reliability

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prospective owners are finding it difficult to keep their projects moving forward.

Even the upgrade market seemed to slow a bit this year, with only 12 systems being upgraded in 2014, compared to 18 systems the previous year. However, with upgrades

continuing to be more cost effective solutions than developing a new system, and with 400G technology on the horizon, expect upgrades to remain popular among system owners.

Overall, we continue see the industry slimming down and

learning how to adapt to the modern market. Interest in new systems continue to shift to the Pacific, while upgrades are the name of the game in most other regions. With 2014 being something of a slow year, some apprehension looking ahead is to be expected, but with new technology and

new routes planned for 2015 and beyond, the industry will continue to move forward confidently.

JAN

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

2015 Release Timel ine

SubmarineCable Map

6th Edition

80Global

Outlook

81Finance& Legal

82Subsea

Capacity

83RegionalSystems

84OffshoreEnergy

85System

Upgrades

Issue 14 Issue 16

Issue 13 Issue 15 Submarine TelecomsIndustry Calendar

14th Edition

2016

Issue 4

Issue 4Finance, Legal & Permitting

Supplement STF

Issue 3Installers

Supplement STF

Issue 2Surveyors

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Issue 1Suppliers

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Issue 5Maintenance

& Repair

Supplement STF

Issue 6Cable

Developers

Supplement STF

New Year: New Opportunities

Stephen Nielsen

The New Year is here! And with the New Year comes

new opportunities for the Submarine Telecoms Industry. Before jumping into the hopes for the upcoming year, however, let’s take a little time to look back on what 2014 promised and what pulled through.

To that end, SubTel Forum asked a few representatives of business in the industry to share their thoughts about what was and what could have been.

Huawei

According to Ma Yanfeng, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Huawei Marine Networks, 2014 pretty much met their expectations. They met their goals and weren’t taken by surprise.

Unfortunately, there were a few opportunities they were expecting that didn’t ever appear.

“We were hoping more opportunities would come from Russia, European region and Middle East,” Yanfeng

said. “Unfortunately those did not happen.”

Yanfeng added that they don’t expect those to pick up in the New Year, given how things are looking.

Huawei also so growth in the Asia Pacific market and Yanfeng expects there will be more requests for regional and oceanic connections in 2015.

“Middle East and east coast Africa are also need diversity and new connections,” Yanfeng said. “With the booming of ultra-broadband and mobile broadband, those islands in Latin America and South Pacific also need submarine cables to be the main connection, instead of satellite.”

Ciena

Despite expectations for 2014, the year really panned out for Ciena, according to Colin Anderson, Marketing Director, Global Submarine Systems of Ciena.

“We expected strong demand for upgrades of

submarine cable networks and we definitely saw that,” Anderson said.

According to him, capacity demand grew more than 30 percent per annum, as forecasted by analysts such as TeleGeography.

New SLTE upgrade technology also proved to be as popular as they were hoping, which proved to be a particular benefit for Ciena.

According to Ovum’s 3Q 2014 Optical Market Share Report,

Ciena is the only one of the three leading SLTE vendors, which together account for 75 % market share, according to Anderson.

They have seen continued focus on maximizing the value of existing cables.

While roughly 20 new cables were contracted in 2014, Anderson said that existing cables, with new SLTE technologies, have potential to meet the majority of market demand.

There had been a number of changes in the market that Ciena had been planning for in 2014, but were surprised on a number of occasion when the changes happened more quickly.

These include content delivery players and Webscale companies becoming more involved in cable upgrades and new-build cables and the wide-scale adoption of 100 Gb/s as the preferred technology for submarine upgrades.

“As expected we have seen the adoption of multiple 100 Gb/s modulation types on single cable networks, sometimes on the same segment,” Anderson said. “To achieve this practically and economically requires very flexible programmable hardware and software, so that one kind of equipment can meet differing needs.”

For that purpose, Ciena has been selling four different 100 Gb/s modulations with a single hardware platform, to meet the needs of specific segments of submarine networks, which they hope will keep them as a leading supplier.

• A 8D-2QAM modulation for maximum capacity on ultra-long segments

• BPSK for other very long segments

• QPSK for segments up to around 6,000 km of existing networks

• 16QAM for double the capacity per wave and better economics on shorter length spans

Stephen Nielsen is staff journalist for Submarine Telecoms Forum. He is a graduate of the Virginia C o m m o n w e a t h University School of Mass Communications and was recognized as a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalism’s Mark of Excellence Award.

These are to keep with what Anderson called a trend towards software defined networking (SDN), for both terrestrial and submarine networks within the industry.

The Future

With the New Year will come an extension of the many opportunities that companies aimed to take advantage of in the 2014. And according to a few industry voices, there should be plenty.

“2015 is looking to be a very interesting area for cables,” said John Hibbard, CEO of Hibbard Consulting Pty. Ltd. and past president of Pacific Telecommunications Council.

According to Hibbard, 2015 will see an upset in popularity of consortium cables.

“The difficult financial conditions around the world are producing a more tighter lending environment for the banks particularly in esoteric investments such as submarine cables,” Hibbard said. “So I expect a stronger leaning to either consortium cables funded by owners’

equity or those funded by the development banks such as World Bank, ADB and maybe the new China Development Bank.”

Hibbard added that he wondered if the Hibernia cable, the first across the Atlantic in a decade, will be replicated this year.

In the Pacific, the economic and social benefits that some emerging island communities have gained from cables are pressuring others to enhance their international connections with either first cables or in some cases second cables to secure their links to the internet, according to Hibbard.

“In 2015 I expect to see the Development Banks and the National Provident Funds increasingly stepping forward to aid the important infrastructure initiatives,” he said.

The growing international focus is something that Anderson agrees with.

He also predicts that Webscale networking and

content delivery companies will continue to grow in importance and influence in the submarine network space—on the demand-side and on the ownership and operation side.

However, while new cables will be built by companies like this, Anderson said that thanks to SLTE technologies, upgrades will continue to hold a commanding influence in the industry. This is because upgrades will allow many cables to exist past their planned 25 years.

Finally, Anderson said that programmable networking will continue to become a reality in international telecoms, both in submarine and terrestrial networks.

Renewed OptimismThe Global Submarine Cable Market In 2014

Michael Ruddy

From theSubmarine Cable

Industry ReportIssue 3

The global submarine cable market in 2014 is one that inspires

renewed optimism. Driven by intensified technical advancement and robust demand for bandwidth, almost $5 billion worth of credible near-term projects are in advanced stages of planning, and continued investment is being directed toward underdeveloped markets.

Given the cost-effectiveness of 100G transmission as well as increasing carrier demand for higher-bandwidth channels, a design capacity threshold of 8 to 10 Tbps per fiber pair characterizes most of the intercontinental cable systems scheduled to enter service over the next two years. Successful trials of long-haul 400G wavelengths were held in 2014, and most suppliers expect terabit wavelengths to be commercially available within a few years. These advances represent a true leap for the industry, which was effectively dominated by 10G transmission technology for more than a decade. Also, given limitations in the upgradability of some existing cable systems, channel speeds

of 100 Gbps and above are likely to stimulate greater investment in new, “next-generation” deployment.

On the demand side of the marketplace, the growth rates of international bandwidth demand remain elevated,

despite increased volumes. In China, international Internet bandwidth grew 80% over the course of 2013, from 1.9 Tbps to

3.4 Tbps. India’s international bandwidth demand grew 75%, from 695 Gbps to 1.2 Tbps. Growth rates of 100%

or more were seen in several large markets including Kenya and Nigeria, while growth rates in comparatively mature markets such as Brazil, France, Singapore, and Turkey exceeded 50%. While Terabit Consulting’s statistical analyses indicated that global bandwidth demand growth had leveled off at just over 30% as recently as 2012, subsequent data indicates that this figure is actually rising, driven by falling unit costs for international bandwidth as well as unforeseen pressure on networks caused by long-duration, bandwidth-intensive applications.

Supply contracts have been signed for two new systems each in the transatlantic, transpacific, and Europe-to-Asia markets, as well as four new Australian intercontinental cables and new systems along previously unserved routes including South America-to-Africa and South America-to-Hawaii. Private project developers, who had effectively been locked out of the market by the oversupply of capacity that flooded markets 14 years ago, are returning to the market and becoming

increasingly successful at securing commitments from major capacity purchasers. Lenders have also become more comfortable with the undersea bandwidth market proposition, supported by more reliable and sophisticated due-diligence evaluations.

Furthermore, the health of the submarine cable marketplace is underscored by the valuations of submarine cable asset transactions. The 2013 sale of the GlobeNet South American submarine cable system to a Brazilian fund led by BTG Pactual, at a reported price of $780 million, roughly a decade

after Brasil Telecom acquired the system in bankruptcy at a price of $47 million, is a clear example of how far the market has rebounded following the dot-com bubble burst. Terabit Consulting’s analysis indicates that even those systems which have exceeded 50% of their expected commercial life are

unlikely to change ownership for less than their original construction cost.

Despite increased investment planned for traditional transoceanic routes, the submarine cable market is still characterized by a focus on emerging and less-developed markets. To a large extent, this can be seen in the planning for new intercontinental systems, which target bandwidth demand in major markets such as India, China, and Brazil. Additionally, investors and cable consortia are targeting secondary and tertiary markets, as well as green-field routes, which are considered to offer stronger opportunities and less competitive environments than more mature markets.

When viewed by Ready-For-Service date (RFS), the submarine cable market in 2013 and 2014 was somewhat muted, with new investment averaging only $1.2 billion per year, well under the historical average. However, the market is by all accounts bustling with activity, with suppliers, ship operators, consultants, and financiers all reporting a surge in prospective new

projects.

Terabit Consulting identified 160 new projects, with a total value of $22.6 billion, which are confirmed to be under consideration by operators and project developers. Of these, 31 projects totaling $4.8 billion are considered by Terabit Consulting to be “high-activity” projects in an advanced stage of development, with a strong possibility of entering service in 2015 or 2016.

There are an additional 77 “medium-activity” projects, totaling $8.2 billion, which are known to be under serious consideration but which have yet to achieve credible progress in financing. A total of 52 “low-activity” projects, which have typically either experienced delays in their development or have yet to achieve critical mass, are collectively valued at $9.6 billion.

Terabit Consulting’s regional analyses of historical and proposed investment revealed the unique characteristics of each long-haul submarine cable market.

The transatlantic market,

which continues to be viewed by some observers as a valuable indicator of the industry’s overall health, has been among the slowest to recover from the overinvestment and financial distress of the early-2000s. The upgradability of older transatlantic systems with 100G, as well as the competitiveness of the transatlantic market place and correspondingly low prices of capacity, have allowed major telecommunications operators on both sides of the Atlantic to comfortably lease and purchase capacity rather than invest in new infrastructure – a preference for “buying” rather than “building.” Nevertheless, after more than a decade without any new transatlantic cable systems, new projects seem to be finally gaining traction.

In the Pacific, meanwhile, bandwidth prices have remained comparatively high, and longer distances have posed technical challenges to the full implementation of 100G upgrades in older systems. Furthermore, with demand in major Asian markets exceeding expectations, three new

transpacific systems have entered service within the last six years, significantly improving connectivity to China and Southeast Asia. Three major consortium projects – the New Cross Pacific cable, Faster, and SEA-US – are in the advanced stages of planning, and the two latter systems awarded supply contracts

in mid-2014. Additionally, Global Cloud Xchange, Microsoft, and NTT are each reportedly considering major investments in new transpacific infrastructure.

In Latin America, growth in capacity demand is among the highest of any region, yet capacity prices have remained stubbornly high.

The region is unique because of its strong integration with North American Internet infrastructure and web content, with Miami serving as a hub for much of the region’s international demand, and US web properties such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Yahoo among the leaders in the number of Latin American visitors. At least three new Latin American projects are underway: America Movil, the largest operator in the Americas by number of subscribers, is in the process of activating its AMX-1 cable in most of its key markets, the PCCS-1 cable is being constructed to markets in the northwest of South America, and Alcatel-Lucent said in 2014 that it had begun the manufacture of Seaborn Networks’ Seabras-1 cable to link the US and Brazil.

The Australian intercontinental capacity market, bolstered by 55% growth in downloaded broadband data volume between 2012 and 2013 as well as the deployment of Australia’s National Broadband Network and New Zealand’s Ultra-Fast Broadband initiative, is also

seeing an increase in new projects, especially following the high-profile collapse of the Pacific Fibre initiative in mid-2012. The APX-East and Hawaiki cables aim to connect Australia and New Zealand to North America, while three credible projects on Australia’s western coast –

APX West, Nextgen Networks’ Australia-Singapore Cable, and the Trident Cable system – aim to improve connectivity to Southeast Asia.

The Sub-Saharan African market, having benefited from four major systems on its western shores and three on its eastern shores within

the last five years, is likely to experience relatively low levels of new cable investment in coming years. Nevertheless, there are at least two serious proposals to link the continent to Latin America, although neither had reported significant progress as of 2014 and Terabit

Consulting’s analysis reveals somewhat limited bandwidth demand between Africa and South America, although an interesting opportunity exists for single-cable connectivity between Africa and the US.

With Indian international bandwidth demand growing at 75% in 2013 and Chinese demand growing at 80%, it is not surprising that there is increased interest in the deployment of Europe-to-Asia submarine cables as well as better connectivity to the South Asia/Middle East region. And although much of the industry’s attention has focused on providing an alternative to the “Achilles’ heel” of global network infrastructure, i.e., the Egyptian bottleneck, in practice the submarine industry continues to invest in traditional Europe-to-Asia cables that terrestrially transit Egypt. Only four years after two new submarine cables entered service between Europe and India, supply contracts have been signed for the massive Asia-Africa-Europe (AAE-1) and Sea-Me-We-5 cables. Connectivity between India and Southeast Asia would be strengthened

by the proposed India Cloud Xchange and Bay of Bengal Gateway cables, with the latter also providing connectivity to the Middle East.

The East Asian submarine capacity market has arguably undergone the biggest shift-change of any regional market, as control of infrastructure has shifted away from private investors and operators from outside the region and back toward East Asian operators themselves. Since 2012 the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable (SJC) and Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) projects have entered service, led by a veritable “who’s-who” of the region’s leading operators including China Mobile, China Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Globe Telecom, KDDI, NTT, PLDT, Singtel, StarHub, Telekom Malaysia, PT Telkom, and TOT (notably, Google is an investor in SJC). This increased carrier investment, which would continue with the planned Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) system, is expected to negatively impact the revenues of operators of existing cable systems including Pacnet, Global Cloud Xchange, Telstra, and

Tata Communications.

In recent years, plans have proliferated for deployment along new, previously unserved submarine cable routes. Some proposals have found it difficult to gain traction. The BRICS cable, which would have connected the US, Brazil, South Africa, India, Singapore, China, and Russia, was unable to achieve financing in its original form, despite widespread political support from governments in emerging markets. Projects in the South Atlantic have

also experienced challenging financing environments, although longer-term prospects for the projects may be more promising. On the other hand, the green-field SAPL cable between South America and Hawaii has reported significant progress, as has another green-field project, Arctic Fibre, which would serve a route that has never been more credible from a technological, economic, and geopolitical standpoint.

Additionally, there is renewed interest in a previously

underserved route, South America-to-Europe, as Latin American and European governments have sought to decentralize submarine cable infrastructure away from the US, particularly following allegations of political and corporate espionage carried out by American authorities.

However, despite the initial outcry from many in the international community in 2013 following the release of documentation by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, with regard to submarine cable infrastructure there has so far been little concrete

progress in the development of alternatives that avoid the US. This is in marked contrast to the backlash against Chinese suppliers such as Huawei, which was effectively shut out of the American market due to a perceived Chinese “cyber-security” threat put forward in 2012 by the US House of Representative’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Overall, demand for international submarine cable capacity remains strong, as evidenced by the growth of activated capacity on major long-haul routes. In the six years since the submarine cable industry ended its period of “dormancy,” activated transoceanic capacity has grown at an average of 36% annually; most recently, between year-end 2012 and 2013, growth was 35%. Total transoceanic bandwidth, as of year-end 2013, was 87 Tbps. While the relatively mature transatlantic and transpacific markets grew at between 25 and 35%, all other routes grew at more than 40%, including the African intercontinental route (57%) and the North America-South America route (52%).

Activated Capacity on Major Undersea Routes (Tbps), 2007-2013

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 CAGR, 2007-2013

Transatlantic 6 8 11 13 15 19 23 25%

Transpacific 3 7 8 12 12 14 20 35%

Pan-East Asian 2 2 6 8 10 12 17 46%

South Asia & Middle East Intercontinental

1 2 3 3 4 8 12 42%

North America-South America 1 1 3 4 6 7 9 52%

Australia & New Zealand Intercontinental

1 1 2 2 2 3 5 40%

Sub-Saharan African Intercontinental 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 57%

Global Transoceanic Bandwidth (Tbps) 14 22 33 43 51 65 87 36%

Percent Change 57% 49% 32% 19% 26% 35%

Michael Ruddy is the author of Terabit’s 1,500-page Undersea Cable Report and has completed feasibility studies for dozens of international fiber optic networks since the 1990s including Hibernia, the Australia-Japan Cable, EASSy, and the Seychelles-East Africa System. Prior to co-founding Terabit in 2000, he was responsible for undersea cable research at Pioneer Consulting, where he created the Worldwide Submarine Fiber Optic Systems report. He was also a market analyst at Kessler Marketing Intelligence (KMI), where he authored the study Beyond the Atlantic Cable Maintenance Agreement, as well as a Foreign Service Officer at the U.S. Department of State.

INTELLIGENCE, ANALYSIS, AND FORECASTINGFOR THE INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURE COMMUNITY

Terabit Consulting is a leading source of market intelligence, forecasting, and guidance for the international telecommunications infrastructure community. Its long history of accurate, innovative analysis and advisory services is in large part attributable to the trust and respect it has earned among industry leaders. Terabit Consulting has completed studies for dozens of leading telecom infrastructure projects worldwide and its analysts have traveled to research and deliver studies in more than 70 countries, giving it an unmatched level of experience in nearly every region of the globe.

Terabit’s primary clients include financial institutions, development agencies, government ministries, telecom carriers, project developers, suppliers, financiers, law offices, and industry associations, as well as other members of the international telecommunications infrastructure community.

Learn more at www.terabitconsulting.com or contact a Terabit Consulting representative today.

Terabit Consulting245 First Street, 18th FloorCambridge, Massachusetts 02142 USATel. +1 617 444 8605info@terabitconsulting.com

Surfacing: An Interactive Visualization of the Undersea Network

Nicole Starosielski

In mid-summer 2011, I drove for more than two hours along narrow

gravel logging roads through the dense forest of Vancouver Island. Trucks barreled down the road without warning, stirring up clouds of dust in their wake. My destination was Bamfield, Canada, a former gateway to the undersea telegraph network. Roads weren’t even built to the town until 1963, and when I finally arrived, I discovered that there was no gas station. If I had not filled up my tank before heading out, I certainly would not have made it back.

Such remote hubs of communication are familiar to those in the cable industry, though few are as out of the way as Bamfield. The station was considered one of the most inaccessible places in the Pacific Cable Board’s network (even more so than Fiji), due to the problems with regional transportation. The nearby inlet was known as the “graveyard of the Pacific” for its numerous wrecks, and the coastal Telegraph Trail served as a lifeline for their

survivors. One cableman recollected that even though it was only 120 miles to Victoria, “you might as well have been a thousand miles away for all the difficulties in transportation.”

Yet as I walked around the town center, which contains only a motel, a bar, and a handful of stores, I saw young people strolling along the streets, divers suiting up, and trucks fitted out for recreational

camping. Bamfield would not be a destination for so many were it not for the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre (BMSC), which transformed the abandoned cable station into labs and classrooms (Figure 1). The memory of the Pacific Cable, which operated here from 1902 to 1959, is infused into the space. Commemorative cable postage stamps are displayed in the BMSC lobby, a cable memorial stands at

the center of the grounds, and signs around the site describe the cable buildings (Figure 2). While the cable station originally channeled people into this remote area, justifying the upkeep of basic infrastructure and ensuring continued accessibility, the marine sciences center serves that function today.

Bamfield is no longer a hub for global communications, but undersea cables remain

Figure 1. Former cable landing at Bamfield, Canada

critical in Vancouver. Where the telegraph network once extended, there is now a seafloor observatory. The North East Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments system enables scientists to communicate with the ocean itself, using undersea cables to track

seafloor processes as they occur in real time. Here, marine science has built on the foundations of the cable industry. Alcatel-Lucent designed and laid the cable. Researchers conduct maintenance on the network from the BMSC. Up the inlet at Port Alberni, the network

terminates in a station built for a 1960s coaxial system. My trip to Bamfield revealed the extensive residual effects of cable networks: just one system has helped to support a tourism industry, generate technological developments, and maintain wide-ranging infrastructure investments.

Those who have been in the industry for decades know that the submerged histories of cable laying matter. Not only are old stations and technologies foundational for new ones, but the knowledge passed down from generation to generation of workers keeps our networks stable and

Figure 2. Monument commemorating Bamfield’s transpacific cable.

reliable. The industry depends on the tried and true, stores much of its information in people, and often establishes new networks along existing routes. When I talk to those in the industry, they worry that with the emergence of private

the Pacific. They might begin at the Port Alberni station up the inlet from Bamfield, where the COMPAC and ANZCAN cables were landed decades ago (Figure 3). Here, when the Canadian Overseas T e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s

cables and the entry of new players, much of this history – upon which our current systems are built – is being lost. The Surfacing project, generously funded by the ICPC and SubOptic, is an

interactive visualization of the undersea cable network, one that introduces users to the submerged histories, cultural conflicts, and current challenges of the industry. It allows users to traverse between cable nodes around

Figure 3. Cable landing point, Port Alberni, Canada

Service was setting up its first transpacific telephone network in 1963, it clashed with environmentalists who protested the clearing of Canadian forest. Surfacing’s users might then hop to another location to read

about the difficulties t e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s companies have had with environmentalists, and the extensive work they have done to protect marine life in California or to move a coral reef in Guam. Such conflicts

are intensifying in our current political environment, and pose a significant challenge to cable laying today.

Or, users might start off in Fiji, where a prominent satellite dish at the Vatuwaqa

cable station carries little of the country’s external communications (Figure 4). Here they might learn that 99% of all transoceanic Internet traffic transits under the ocean, rather than by air. They can travel from Fiji via the Southern Cross Cable Network, commemorated by a plaque inside the Vatuwaqa station, to Takapuna on New Zealand’s North Island, where a triangular sign marks off the area from anchorage (Figure 5). Few realize that the most significant threats to cable systems are not terrorists or natural disasters, but boaters who unknowingly drop their anchors on critical international links.

Surfacing generates greater visibility for cable systems and gives Internet users an understanding of the vast infrastructure that supports their everyday communications. Although telecoms have long kept networks out of sight to increase their security, invisibility is now a threat to cables. If cables are invisible to policy makers,

Figure 4. The satellite at Fiji’s Vatuwaqa station, now a relic of a former era.

government regulators, corporate customers, business managers, and politicians, then critical decisions about funding and regulation, which could make our networks more robust and accessible, will continue to be uninformed. At the same time, the project carefully selects images and information to ensure cable security. I hope that Surfacing will also be of interest to

those in the cable industry, whether as an opportunity to connect one’s experience to a deep history or, for those who are newcomers, to better grasp the long-standing developments in cable laying. As the project is still in progress, I welcome any stories, images, or comments at nicole.starosielski@nyu.edu.

Part of this essay has been excerpted from The Undersea Network, forthcoming in March 2015.

Nicole Starosielski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her book, The Undersea Network (Duke University Press), charts the development of transoceanic cable systems, beginning with the nineteenth century telegraph network and extending to today’s fiber-optic infrastructure. She has published articles on submarine cable systems in numerous journals and edited collections.

Figure 5. A cable warning at Takapuna, New Zealand.

Key FactorsContributing to Recycled System Implementation

Steve Dawe

Recycled submarine sys-tems are currently a topic of interest to address the

digital divide; such projects have been implemented over the past thirty-four years1. In this article we will consider three aspects of recycled systems fundamental to their successful implementation

Economic Constraints

In common with all potential commercial cable systems a proj-ect economic appraisal and busi-ness case are prerequisites; unsur-prisingly, recycled system projects are no different. In many cases it is the feasibility study and Hard System Analysis (HSA) used to test the business case that points towards an alternate route to ob-jectives (RTO) for the “stakehold-ers”. Once stakeholders select a recycled project there are three primary linked variables: vessel day rate, vessel endurance and asset value. These impact project return on capital invested (ROCI) appraisal. We shall consider each of these in turn below:-

Vessel Cost

Experienced submarine systems professionals are familiar with the range of prices levied for cable ship services and hence under-stand the contribution to project 1 M Summers, J Kincey, “The Re-Deployment Route to Cost Effective Cable Systems”, SubOptic 2007, Baltimore, Paper We6.01

costs of the marine activities. It is self-evident that the contribu-tion to recycled project costs from marine activities will be propor-tionally higher than a new build system since there is inherently a recovery operation and associat-ed transits (in most instances).

Vessel Endurance

Generically, in common with the majority of cargo vessels, cable

ships are designed with sufficient endurance to economically com-plete an ocean passage without the need to make an additional port call to bunker. Nominally, this turns out to be about 50 days. A cable ship in a recovery oper-ation is therefore constrained by the transits to and from the near-est port of call for bunkers and the days at sea recovering the cable.

In the author’s experience, recy-

cled projects necessitating more than one recovery operation have not satisfied HSA project apprais-al. So an empirical limit on recy-cle project lengths can be estimat-ed as the product of the average daily recovery rate and the vessel endurance (in our experience ap-proximately 2500 km).

Asset Value

In the author’s experience with-

To hear more about recycling (and salvaging) pre-owned networks from industry experts who, like Steve, have expe-rience in this area, we invite you to come to PTC’15’s Sun-day morning panel session, “Long Live Submarine Cables!”. This panel session is again, this year, sponsored by SubOptic and led by Elaine Stafford (The David Ross Group). Panelists include John Hibbard (Hibbard Consulting), Stuart Barnes (Xtera), Larry Moskowitz (AT&T), Raynald LeConte (Or-ange), Seymour Shapiro (retired from SubCom), Bernard Lo-gan (Mertech Marine), and Keith Schofield (Pioneer). Since the possibility of recycling pre-owned undersea fi-ber-optic networks started to be openly discussed a decade ago, seven commercial undersea networks have been con-structed from pre-owned systems. These networks, owned by global operators, continue to operate and perform reliably (without wet system failure) across the globe- in the Pacific, Caribbean and Atlantic. Most of these networks are relative-ly short- connecting regions less than 2000 km. apart. Several not only deployed recycled cable, but also recycled repeat-ers. Some also recycled shore ends and terminal equipment. Recycling is an affordable way for some regions to gain the benefits of fiber connectivity to the global network. Whether or not it is the right solution for a specific need must be exam-ined on a case-by-case basis. Come hear from experts about the reliability, marine, system-design, and management is-sues associated with recycling pre-owned networks, and also learn about salvaging retired networks when recycling may not make sense. SubOptic is now also sponsoring a working group focused on “Extending the Life of Submarine Cable Networks”, led by Keith Schofield. As part of the panel, Keith will be sharing the goals and plans of this working group.

in the industry, retired or out of service (OOS) cables have been discounted and have been treat-ed largely as low risk liabilities i.e. zero asset value. However, the seascape has altered with the recent growth of interest in re-covering and either salvaging or recycling submarine cables. In the zero asset value model the as-set value is related purely to the recovery investment of the stake-holder. Hence, simplistically, the asset value can be defined as the product of the vessel rate/day ($/day) and the recovery rate/day (km/day) which yields an asset value ($/km). Taking any acqui-sition fee ($/km) into account, it can be seen that the aggregate As-set Value is simply the sum of the two asset values.

Variable Interaction

From the above variables it is fairly straightforward to use linear pro-gramming to ascertain a feasible region for a given set of particular inputs; this may be used to com-pare the overall value proposition of “new vs. old” or support deci-sion analysis in asset acquisition.

What has become clear to the au-thor is the sensitivity of HSA for recycling projects to these three input variables, a factor that any project team undertaking such a project needs to be fully aware.

Project Structures

“Key to the success of a recycling project is close teamwork within and among the contracting partners. As well as an experienced project engi-neering and management team, an appropriate risk and reward struc-ture needs to be implemented. Par-ticularly between system integrator, marine contractor and system engi-neer functions.”

The project management and en-gineering teams at Vodafone have developed a number of successful recycled system projects for various stakeholder groups over the past six years; through all these proj-ects Vodafone recommended and implemented a contract structure apportioning project risks in an equitable manner among the proj-ect contractors. Careful consider-ation of each contractor’s activities (including the project engineering team) was used to complete a proj-ect risk matrix and this has been used as a template to address risk within the numerous contractors in the project. The structure is broad-er and more complex than a normal consortium or private submarine cable contract (engineer, procure, install & commission (EPIC)) where typically the Supplier takes all the EPIC risks and the Purchaser takes a risk profile commensurate with the project tasks outside the scope of the Supplier (typically, Terminal Stations and Regulatory permits

etc.): in a recycled project the risks are held among several key con-tractors. The System performance, capacity, line design and pow-er budget lies with the Terminal Transmission equipment contractor while Route, Route Engineering, Cable selection and System Integra-tion has been the responsibility of the Vodafone Submarine Engineer-ing teams. Obviously, the wealth of expertise and experience within the Project and Engineering team was a factor in the selection of the contrac-tual structure2.2 M André, “How About Technical Skills Within the Submarine Industry?”, SubOptic 2013, Paris, Paper 328

A feature of recycling projects dif-ferent from a normal procurement is the management of system in-tegration: in our experience, this has been the undertaken by rep-resentatives from the integration risk owners working as a team; this has been both stimulating as well as challenging. The number of factors a project team needs to consider in integration, and the degree of influence they have upon the final configuration, is surprising. Examples are: original or new repeaters, PFE manage-ment, supervision of recovered

plant, line design, route design and selection of dispersion map. The approach to the latter factor has changed over time from a line design requirement for 10G sys-tems to analysis of whether the line compensation is detrimental to the line design and whether the cable should be left in situ on the seabed or recovered and re-moved from the system on board, whichever option offers the short-est marine program. After all a donor system with +ve and –ve dispersion fibre with the –ve dis-persion fibre removed is the same

in terms of dispersion as a new build 100*100G system (All +ve).

Route Engineering Constraints

“Route engineering and marine ex-pertise within the stakeholder group proved a critical resource to develop a low risk technical solution matching asset availability with route require-ments”

There are several aspects of cable engineering and marine activities that are critical to the success of a recycled system project.

With competent resources in-house, Vodafone has been able to leverage its expertise and exten-sive survey database to extend Desk Top Study (DTS) and Fea-sibility Study (FS) scopes to min-imise survey work. One output from the extended FS has been the production of a survey data mosaic based on data from other systems along with fault histories of existing cable assets for the new system. This data has been used to develop survey programmes designed to infill any missing in-formation. Besides reducing sur-vey costs there has also been the added benefit of being able to dis-pense with a separate survey and infill data with a survey runs by the installation vessel.

There have been situations where uncertainty has existed in selec-tion of best route for the new sys-

tem. Where this has occurred it has been expedient to recover suf-ficient submerged plant for op-tional routing to be implemented based on the survey findings.

Route Engineering is complicated by the restrictions imposed from the cable types within the donor system and the levels of burial protection implemented on that system. In general, the difficulties encountered are inversely pro-portional to deployment depth by virtue of the relative ease of recovering a LW or LWP surface laid cable by comparison with the difficulties of armoured cables re-covery, particularly when they are buried.

A complication that projects faced was armoured cable avail-ability. All the recycled projects Vodafone have undertaken have been systems shorter than the donor system. Since we have worked with a single donor sys-tem this meant that we reached a point where, while there was ample deep water cable to be re-covered, only limited Armoured Cable and armoured cable types were available. Once the donor cable’s shore ends and armoured cables had been recovered to the fullest extent, project teams have approached Armour cable re-quirements by a combination of approaches such as acquisition and deployment of redundant re-

gional cable spares (at the end of operational life of cable systems it is common for “owners” to either sell or scrap their spares holdings since they will be keen to halt any recurring storage charges from their spare cable holdings in or-der to close their books on the Operation & Maintenance bud-gets) and re-use of existing shore end cables3. The availability of a compatible out of service shore-end at one or more locations of a proposed connection has proved to be valuable, not only in terms of the armour cable, but also the benefits in simplification of per-mits, existing fault history, instal-lation cost savings and minimised environmental impact of the recy-cled system. The availability and the reuse of existing shore ends have made very positive contri-butions to overall project apprais-al. The third option is to procure new armoured cable sections to meet the project requirements.

Life Expectancy

Obviously, reliability and life ex-pectancy of a recycled system are also key factors for any potential project Vodafone conducted a thorough reliability simulation prior to committing to recycling projects. It is widely reported that cable recovered from the deep ocean is in pristine condition and 3 S Dawe, T Frisch, B O’Dwyer, D Toombs, “Shore Ends to Re-Use or Not to Re-Use?”, SubOptic 2004, Monaco, Paper Tu A2.3

it has been possible to return such cable to service without remedial work. This has certainly been the experience from Vodafone’s proj-ect involvement. System fault history has been consistent with industry norms with no failures observed due to submerged ca-ble and plant. System life expec-tancy is the subject of a SubOptic sponsored collaborative project in which Vodafone is participat-ing, to be reported on at SubOptic 2016 in Dubai

Conclusion

There have been a number of suc-cessful recycled submarine sys-tems the majority completed in the last eight years the article has described three key factors con-tributing to a successful recycling project for the guidance of poten-tial investors or stakeholders. The relative influence of each factor is always dependent on the particu-lar case.

Stephen Dawe, based in London, England, is Engineering & Business Development Manager at Vodafone Group Services Ltd with 32 years of experience in the submarine systems industry and an extensive background in engineering, technical and business operations, technical and network planning, and business planning and development. Stephen has been involved in all aspects of recycled systems having worked on 4 separate recycled system project. Prior to heading up business development, Stephen was Director of Submarine Systems Engineering at Cable & Wireless Global Networks where he led a team that grew C&W’s international consultancy business to over £11 million. His expertise includes international connectivity and carrier commercial arrangements for submarine cables. He was the Network Manager for the Japan-US Cable and has chaired and managed a wide range of diverse submarine systems, Stephen is a regular contributor to the SubOptic and active participant in Subsea Cables UK and on a number of cross industry committees.

Submarine Cablesof the World

Afghanistan

Algeria

Angola

Antarctica

Argentina

Armenia

Australia

Austria

Bangladesh

Belarus

Benin

Bhutan

Bolivia

Botswana

Brazil

Bulgaria

BurkinaFaso

Burundi

Cambodia

Cameroon

Canada

CentralAfrican

Republic

Chad

Chile

China

Colombia

Congo

Côted'Ivoire

CzechRepublic

DemocraticRepublic ofthe Congo

Denmark

Ecuador

Egypt

Eritrea

Estonia

Ethiopia

Finland

France

Gabon

Georgia

Germany

Ghana

Greece

Greenland

Guinea

Hungary

Iceland

India

Indonesia

IranIraq

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Japan

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kyrgyzstan

Laos

Latvia

Libya

Lithuania

Madag

asca

r

Malaysia

Mali

MarshallIslands

Mauritania

Mexico

Micronesia

Mongolia

Morocco

Mozambique

Myanmar

Namibia

Nepal

NewZealand

Niger

Nigeria

NorthKorea

Norway

Oman

Pakistan

Papua NewGuinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portu

gal

Romania

RussianFederation

Rwanda

Samoa

SaudiArabia

Senegal

Slovakia

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Sweden

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Submarine Cables of The World2015 Edition

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ComingSoonTo A Wal lNear You

Leading the DevelopmentOf 100G and 400G Transmission Technology

Ning Jing, Wang Yanpu

& Wang Ke

With the explosive growth of data c o m m u n i c a t i o n s ,

wideband video and broadband connection services, the requirement to improve the single-channel transmission rate and spectral efficiency is an area of research and development focus for Huawei Marine Networks Co., Ltd. (Huawei Marine).

Considering the development of client-side interface standards, single-channel 100G/400G transmission technology has become the research hotspot and the development direction in data communication field. Along with the techniques of integration, chips and high-speed analog to digital converter (ADC)/DAC becoming mature, high order modulation, coherent detection, multifunctional transceiver digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms and outstanding forward error correction (FEC) ability are the critical techniques to conduct 100G/400G transmission.

Since 2010, many submarine cable network providers have launched their 100G coherent products, which are primarily deployed in regional, trans-At-lantic and trans-Pacific systems. The successful performance test-ing coupled with the number of 100G systems deployed have combined to not only promote

this technology, but have under-pinned the maturity of the 100G product set.

To date 100G coherent optical transmission has been com-mercially applied both in new-build submarine systems and in upgrading existing older systems. In parallel, in order to further improve system capac-ity, research focused on 400G technology has been underway since 2010. As the single-chan-nel transmission rate increases to 400G, higher-order modula-tion formats (e.g. quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)) and multi-carrier multiplexing (e.g. Super-channel transmis-sion using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)) will be introduced, and the re-quirements of many essential techniques used in 100G such as DSP, soft decision forward error correction (SD-FEC), non-linear compensation and spec-tral compression will be further increased. All these technologies will be fundamental require-ments to successfully develop and implement 400G systems.

In order to meet the ultra-long-haul, large capacity and high reliability requirements of sub-marine transmission coupled with the various application sce-narios driven by customer de-mands, Huawei Marine provides two types of competitive 100G solutions. (1) 100G single-carri-er polarization division multi-

plexed quadrature phase shift key-ing (PDM-QPSK) scheme: with high spectral efficiency and high capacity advantages; and (2) 100G dual-car-rier polarization division multi-plexed binary phase shift keying (DC-PDM-BPSK) scheme: with high performance and ultra- long-haul transmission advantages. Hua-wei Marine’s 100G solutions con-tain many advantages when com-pared across the current market:

(1) Huawei Technologies (Hua-wei) -developed Proprietary DSP technique (Fig 1) Use the advanced speech

call items (ASCI) chip man-ufacturing technologies: which contain many advan-tages such as: stable work-ing state, high integration, low time-delay, and optimal low power consumption (1.0W/G)

Use innovative algorithms and architecture design: Ad-vanced DSP can satisfy the requirement of 100G trans-mission, being compatible with future 400G/1T/2T ap-plications as well.

Have superior chromatic dispersion (CD) and polar-ization mode dispersion (PMD) compensation per-formance: Dispersion com-pensation module (DCM) will not be configured in the new 100G networks, which not only reduce the build costs, but eliminate time-de-lay redundancy in DCMs. The CD compensation ca-pacity of the 3rd generation of Huawei Marine’s 100G board can reach to 240ns/nm.

Have superior Tx-DSP algo-rithms and spectrum shap-ing technologies: which can not only increase the trans-mission bandwidth, but also reduce the nonlinear penalty and lower filtering penalty caused by the increased bit rate.

Fig 1: 2nd Gen. 100G/400G DSP Chip

(2) Super hard decision (HD) FEC and SD-FEC techniqueWith the gradually increasing of complexity and difficulty, Huawei Marine’s 100G FEC development has evolved in three stages to overcome the technical challenges and complexities: HD-FEC, 1st generation SD-FEC, and 2nd generation SD-FEC, brought a number of benefits such as improved net coding gain (NCG), transmission performance, distance and capacity. For example, Huawei Marine’s 2nd generation SD-FEC adopts new enhanced error correction algorithms based on traditional SD-FEC, to achieve an error correction threshold of 3.4e-2 (Fig 2). This resulted in an improved transmission capability of approximately 33% when compared to 1st generation SD-FEC technology, and ensures

the trans-Pacific transmission successfully (Fig 3). In addition, Huawei Marine’s SD-FEC technology has the following advantages:

High efficiency and low delay: maximize the use of bandwidth resources, and achieve ultra-low encoding and decoding delay. The de-lay of 2nd generation SD-FEC is lower than 1us.

Super stability: realize ul-tra-low error floor, introduce bypass floor elimination module, and provide high-ly reliable commercial solu-tions.

Long-term evolution of the intelligent FEC: oriented to the next generation high

speed optical transmission system, realize the long-term evolution, and provide adaptive and intelligent FEC technique. The FEC technol-ogy can better support fu-ture 200G, 400G, even for 1T transmission system.

(3) Flex Grid dynamic band-width manage technique

Flex Grid technique allows the channel bandwidth manage-ment to be controlled within 12.5GHz at a minimum. This ensures the transmission system can be compatible with 25GHz/ 37.5GHz/50GHz/100GHz/etc, and realises the hybrid transmission configuration for 10G/40G/100G single carri-er/100G dual carriers (Fig 4). Flex Grid technique can make

full use of the system band-width resource, and flexibly configure channel wavelengths, which plays a significant role in improving the capacity for sys-tem transmission.

(4) Tributary & line card split-ting optical transport net-work (OTN) structureHuawei Marine employs tribu-tary & line card splitting OTN structure (Fig 5). When the cus-tomer requires an increase in transmission, only the line cards need to be changed, which mit-igates the need to remove the tributary cards. This allows seamless upgrades to effectively reduce operators’ operating ex-pense (OPEX).

Fig 2: Error Correction Capability of Huawei Marine 2nd SD-FEC

Fig 3: The Comparison of different Huawei Marine 100G Boards

These technologies underpin Huawei Marine 100G products’ transmission capacity and per-formance, while providing addi-tional advantages in flexible net-working, power control, supply stability and smooth upgrading to 400G technology.Based on the well-developed 100G product architecture and leading technical advantages, Huawei Marine in conjunction with parent company Huawei will continue to invest in 400G research and development technology.

Currently Huawei Marine

adopts two kinds of modulation format: PDM-16QAM and PDM-QPSK. PDM-16QAM has high spectral efficiency and transmission capacity, but high DSP and OSNR-Limit demands, which may possibly become the primary option in future unrepeated and mid-range transmission market sectors. When considering ultra-long-haul transoceanic transmission links, Huawei Marine advocate the use of high-baudrate PDM-QPSK format，combined with innovative transceiver faster than Nyquist (FTN) technologies，and HW’s super electronic nonlinear compensation algorithms and specific SD-FEC technique. All

these techniques can ensure the high performance of 400G PDM-QPSK scheme over long-haul transoceanic transmission.

FTN technology was developed initially in 1975, and subsequent developments has resulted in the technology increasing by 30% (or more) data in the same bandwidth at the same energy per bit and error rate compared to traditional methods. HW’s proprietary FTN scheme can send signal with bandwidth less than its baudrate by designing the special Tx-DSP for pulse shaping and special Rx-DSP to recover signal, which called soft-in-soft-out (SISO) FTN solution. The receiver side DSP flow with soft output FTN

(SOFTN) is shown in Fig 6. Within the receiver, in addition to the conventional modules such as CD compensation, re-sampling, adaptive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) equalization, carrier phase recovery, and cycle slip correction, an additional SOFTN processing block with a 3taps finite impulse response filter (FIR and) a sequence detector is used to enhance the performance. The 3taps FIR can suppress the enhanced noise after MIMO equalization, but it introduces inter symbol interference (ISI). BCJR sequence detector is used to detect the signal and eliminate ISI. The soft output algorithm with BCJR is used to provide soft information for later soft input soft output MLSE. There is no iteration between BCJR and FEC processing. After the nonlinear

Fig 4: Flex Grid Schematic

Fig 5: Huawei Marine OTN Structure

compensation module MLSE is the SD-FEC error correction module.

It is well known that the transmission distance of an optical transmission system is limited by the available optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) at the receiver. The receiving OSNR can be increased by either decreasing the noise added to the link or increasing signal launch power. However, for an existing fiber link, nothing can be done to reduce the noise power. Therefore the sole method available to achieve this, is to increase the optical input power. However, the Kerr nonlinearity in the optical fiber sets an upper limit on the practical input power. The more the input power increases, the more nonlinearity penalty introduced. Compensating fiber nonlinearities can increase the practical input power, thus extend the reach of a fiber transmission system. There are several approaches to suppress the fiber nonlinearities, including dispersion management, employing fibers with larger core diameter, and electronic nonlinear compensation in

digital domain. For Huawei Marine’s 400G prototype, electronic dispersion pre-compensation and nonlinear compensation block MLSE in DSP are performed.After fiber nonlinearity compensation processing, SDFEC with low-density parity check convolution codes (LDPC-CCs) adopts to recover the signal. It has the potential to reach higher performance parameters with relatively lower implementation complexity than LDPC block codes (LDPC-BCs). It is well known that the constraint length is required be large enough to design such a high rate code without error floor down to 1E-15.Recently, Huawei Marine has carried out a series of 100G field trials, lab experiments, and commercial deployments in unrepeated systems, region and transoceanic repeated transmission systems, and also obtained excellent performance. The following field trials provide such examples.

Case1: 100G field trail carried out on one TATA ~6600km submarine transmission link

The cable consists of large mode fiber (LMF) fiber (72µm², 0.21 dB/km, -3.21ps/nm-

km) spliced high dispersion fiber (HDF) fiber (50µm², 0.21dB/km, -2.95ps/nm-km) with compensating by Non-Dispersion Shifted Fiber (NDSF) (75µm², 0.19dB/km, 16.71ps/nm-km) every 500km length, and it consists of 147 undersea repeaters, launch power is 13dBm, noise figure is less than 5dB, the normal gain is 10.2dB. The total residual dispersion of cable link is between -10ns/nm~10ns/nm, which could be compensated digitally at our receiver DSP. The transmitter use bulk modulation light source to achieve full bandwidth 100G signal transmission. The total channel is 66 waves with 50GHz channel spacing. The network diagram is as shown in Fig 7.

Huawei Marine successful completed 100G field trail using DC-PDM-BPSK and PDM-QPSK two kinds of 100G solutions. First of all, 100G DC-PDM-BPSK products are transmitted 66 channels on full bandwidth successfully. The capacity is 3.3TGbps, the average Before-FEC-Q value is 9.55dB and the

minimum Before-FEC-Q value is 8.2dB with 3dB Q margin. Next Huawei Marine used DC-PDM-BPSK and PDM-QPSK hybrid transmitted to improve the spectrum efficiency and capacity. The capacity is promoted to 4.2Tbps, including 20 PMD-QPSK and 44 DC-PDM-BPSK. The minimum Before-FEC-Q value of DC-PDM-BPSK is 8.2dB with 3 dB margin. The minimum Before-FEC-Q value of PDM-QPSK is 7.3dB with 2.1dB margin. Subsequently the channel of the worst performance was chosen to test long-term performance by SDH analyzer for 7 days. The analyzer was error free during 7 days, and the 5sigma of Before-FEC-Q fluctuation is 0.26dB.

Case2: 400G field trail carried out on the same TATA link

Huawei Marine and parent company HW also successfully executed a 400G field trail on this 6600km link. The 400G prototype used 400G PDM-QPSK modulation combined with HW-developed innovative FIN technique. During continual testing, results showed that

Fig 6: Receiver DSP flow with SOFTN (BCJR)

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the optimal received OSNR is 18dB, while the Q factor values of two subcarriers (1563.45nm and 1562.64nm) were 6.9dB and 6.6dB. Q margins of the two 400G subcarriers are 1dB and 0.7dB respectively, compared with the FEC threshold 5.9dB.The test results demonstrated an optical transmission of 400G signals, an industry-first for a submarine cable system of this length.

This paper reviews the current state of 100G/400G, highlighting the enabling techniques and Huawei Marine’s competitive solutions, which were successfully validated by outstanding performance of a 100G/400G field trial on a trans-Atlantic network. To support further traffic growth demand, 400G will become the primary next-generation transmission technologies that will be employed in existing mid-range or long-haul submarine cable infrastructure to further lower customer capital requirements and significantly reduce capacity unit costs.

Wang Ke has 4 years’ experience within the Optical Transmission Technology Research sectors, currently serving as System Research Engineer for Huawei Technologies co., ltd (Huawei) in China. He has gained experience in large scale telecommunications project achievement of optical terrestrial systems. He was employed by Huawei since year 2011. He was involved in 400G and beyond 1T optical system development. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology in 2010.

Wang Yanpu has 5 years’ experience within the Terrestrial and Submarine Telecommunication & Service Provider sectors, currently serving as System Test Engineer for Huawei Marine Networks (Huawei Marine) in China. He has gained experience in large scale telecommunications project upgrade and delivery of optical terrestrial and submarine systems. He was employed by Huawei Marine since year 2009, and he was involved in transmission solution development and a large number of transatlantic/transpacific system testing. He has published paper on Suboptic’2013. He holds a Master’s degree in Physical Electronics from Tianjin University.

Ning Jing has 5 years’ experience within the Terrestrial and Submarine Telecommunication & Service Provider sectors, currently serving as System simulation Engineer for Huawei Marine Networks Co. Ltd. (Huawei Marine) in China. She has gained experience in large scale t e l e c o m m u n i c a t i o n s project simulation of optical terrestrial and submarine systems. She was employed by Huawei Marine since year2010. She was involved in simulation model development and a large number of regional and transatlantic/transpacific submarine system simulations. She has published paper on Suboptic’2013. She holds a Master’s degree in Communication and Information Systems from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

There’s a new power under ocean uniting the world in a whole new way. With unparalleled development expertise and outstanding technology, Huawei Marine is revolutionizing trans-ocean communications with a new generation of repeaters and highly reliable submarine cable systems that offer greater transmission capacity, longer transmission distances and faster response to customer needs. Huawei Marine: connecting the world one ocean at a time.

The Power of Submarine Information Transmission

New MaterialsFor the First Transatlantic Cables

Richard Buchanan

In SubTel Forum Magazine is-sue No.75 Stewart Ash wrote an article on The Telegraph

Construction and Maintenance Company Ltd (its name abbrevi-ated to Telcon) at Enderby Wharf in Greenwich. This is a companion piece, written by one who worked at Standard Telephones & Cables and came to the Telcon site soon after they took it over. It is about the trib-ulations of the new materials that were used for the first trans-Atlan-tic cables.

Telcon had been formed in 1864 by the amalgamation of the Gut-ta Percha Co and Glass, Elliott & Co, who between them had already made cables for the at-tempts in 1856 & 1857 to make a trans-Atlantic telegraph con-nection, the second laid success-fully but only to work for a few weeks. Telcon supplied cable for two more cables in 1865 & 1866, the second of these successful at the first attempt, and both work-ing by the end of 1866. This was the pivotal event for Telcon as a submarine cable manufacturer.

The organisation and engineer-ing involved in manufacturing and laying the four cables was impressive. It involved other specialist companies, with im-plications for transport between

them; and of course academic studies. It was a considerable expansion in a new business, us-ing new materials.

Even the Copper for the centre conductor was not well under-stood. Gutta Percha, to insulate it, had been unknown in either Europe or North America (ex-cept as a botanical curiosity) be-fore 1842. Although iron & steel wires were already being made, suitable manufacturing meth-ods to achieve both the strength and ductility needed for the ex-ternal armouring was only just being developed.

Copper

Thomas Bolton & Sons in Bir-mingham produced copper wire using copper from various smelters in South Wales. One of their major products was bell wire, of 14 BWG (Birmingham wire gauge, 0.083 inches, 2.1mm, diameter), used for instance in great houses between a lever in a room to a mechanical bell in the servant’s quarters; for which there was little need to specify strength and none for electri-cal resistivity. Short telegraph cables could work with this but both mattered for long sys-tems. It was found that smelting

methods varied considerably, and that impurities in the ore could cause significant degrada-tion in electrical and mechanical properties. They made a solid 14 BWG copper central conductor for the first Anglo-French sub-marine cable in 1850, but wire for four conductors in the core of the second, successful, cable in 1851.

However, for the 1856 & 1857 cables the central conductor, of a better quality copper, was of

seven strands (one central strand with six laid (wound) helically over it on a long pitch to make a snug fit) to make it more flexible and able to suffer the breakage of a strand without losing con-ductivity. The overall conductor diameter was again 14 BWG.

The Gutta Percha Co extruded gutta percha over the central conductor to make the core - in manageable 2 mile (just over 3km) lengths. This was trans-ferred to Glass, Elliott & Co and

to R S Newall both of whom went on to add the armouring and splice these into 300 mile (480km) sections. Glass, Elliott & Co stored their sections at Greenwich and R S Newall at Birkenhead. These would be spliced together when loaded onto the laying vessels.

Gutta Percha

Gutta Percha is a latex obtained from trees which grow in the tropical South East Asian region.

Dr William Montgomerie, based in Malaya, saw it being used lo-cally to make parang handles and soon learnt from the local people what its properties were - its strength, water resistance, inertness and unattractiveness to animals that might eat it. He sent samples to the Royal So-ciety in London where it was found ideal for a range of uses. It is hard when cold, but softens when heated above about 65OC when it can be shaped. Various domestic items were made and it found a niche in dentistry. Far-aday (equally famous in his day as a chemist as for electrical ad-vances) suggested its use as an insulator for telegraph wires, for which it proved superior to any-thing else then available.

This led to experiments in 1849 for undersea telegraph, and a cable was laid to England to France in 1850 (with no armour-ing) and worked for a few days. To guard against imperfections the gutta percha was applied to the conductor in two layers. The next year another cable was laid, with armouring, and worked well. The 1856 & 1857 Atlantic cables had three layers of gutta percha, and the 1865 & 1866 ca-bles had four.

Gutta Percha was usually ex-tracted by first cutting down the tree, cutting holes in the bark and collecting the sap as it ran out, then putting it in boiling water and floating off the gutta percha, typically 1， lb (600gm). Not a big harvest from a tree taking about 30 years to ma-ture with a height of about 70 ft (20m). The gutta percha con-gealed into a grey lump; several of these were then made up into 30 lb cakes for shipment to cus-tomers’ factories where it was refined as necessary. When puri-fied a ton of gutta percha could be harvested from felling about 2000 trees.

Suddenly a vast market opened up, and its popularity led to a loss of the trees by an estimat-ed ten million per year - one trans-Atlantic cable used over a million trees worth. Although several related types of tree pro-duce gutta percha and grow plentifully all over south-east Asia, this could not go on and it was supplemented by plan-tations, with adjacent works for initial extraction. Plantation trees are not cut down but reg-ularly pruned; a ton of gutta percha extracted from 30 tons of pulverised prunings.

Telcon’s usage increased to the extent that in 1915 they estab-lished their own 3500 acre (1400 ha) plantation in Malaya, called

the Selborne Plantation after the Chairman, Lord Selborne. It could produce 120 tons per year –

still only a fraction of their usage.

Balata, from South America, a related latex containing a low-

er proportion of gutta percha, is another source. The latex is a mixture of compounds and is of variable quality. For subma-

rine cables a high grade with a minimum resinous content was required.

Paragutta - Rubber has a com-mercial history as old as gutta percha; Thomas Hancock, the brother of Charles Hancock of the Gutta Percha Co, developed the vulcanisation process. How-ever it was never found suit-able for submarine use. But in 1930 Paragutta was developed in which purified rubber mixed with gutta percha produced a suitable material with a lower dielectric constant - enabling higher frequencies to be trans-mitted, either for several simul-taneous telegraph channels or even telephony on short routes.

Armour Wires

Bessemer developed his steel making process in 1850s, to the point where a commercial blast furnace was set up in Sheffield in 1860. This still needed iron ore with a low content of phos-phorous, which makes steel brit-tle, and it was 1878 before the addition of lime enabled more widely available ores to be used. So the steel used for the armour wires of the first trans-Atlantic cables was made by older meth-ods, with less control of chem-

ical impurities or uniformity than we now take for grant-ed.

Steel ropes already had a market for standing rigging of the large naval ships of the day. Such ropes were usually of hemp, reinforced with a core of steel wires. Steel ropes were also needed for the winding engines of deep coal mines.

A low carbon steel was wanted for ar-mour wire, made from low phos-phorous iron ore. Wrought iron and cast iron (low and high carbon respec-tively), or blister steel (high carbon) were starting ma-terials. Blister steel was made by heat-ing bars of wrought iron surrounded in charcoal in a sealed furnace, heated to about 1000OC (1800OF) – the

blisters formed by carbon diox-ide resulting from the reaction of the carbon with the oxides of impurities. The process con-tinued by putting wrought iron with cast iron or blister steel in a crucible, where it would be melted – inspected when cold – and remelted perhaps twice more. The product was a bil-let of steel whose composition, and quality, depended not only on the types of iron/steel being used, but on the lining material of the crucible.

The billet was rolled into a rod, and a point made at one end. The point was put through a hole in a Plate and pulled through to form a thick wire. After anneal-ing the process was repeated, and then as many times as nec-essary to obtain a wire of the de-sired gauge.

The first company to make ar-mour wires was R S Newall & Co for the 1851 Anglo-French cable, followed by several more short systems. They bought in their cable cores from the Gutta Percha Co and then completed these cable systems. They also made half of the 1856 & 1857 ca-bles at Birkenhead, sharing the work with the Glass, Elliott & Co. To make the cable more flex-

ible and less liable to fracture the armour wire itself was fabricat-ed (like the central conductor) as a seven strand wire, 18 such wires being helically wrapped around the core.

The contract for the armour wires for the 1865 & 1866 ca-bles was awarded to Webster & Horsfall in Birmingham who had developed an improved annealing process. They made a single wire of 13 BWG (0.095 inches, 2.41mm). Even so the 1865 cable suffered armour wire fractures causing penetration of the insulation, which had to be cut out and the cable respliced during the lay. The armouring for the 1866 cable used a lower carbon steel, and the wire was galvanised by Richard Johnson & Nephew in Manchester.

When applied to the cable by Telcon each armour wire was wrapped in 50 hemp yarns, under a licence from John & Edwin Wright Ltd; this was to reduce the weight of the cable while still having the necessary strength. Ten such armour wires were wound onto the cable.

Shore Ends

To protect the cable against abrasion on a rocky seashore,

tidal currents and ships’ anchors extra armouring was added around the cable. For the 1856 & 1857 cables twelve 0 BWG (0.34 inches, 8.64mm diameter) ar-mour wires were used.

On the 1865 & 1866 cables there were again twelve armour wires but this time each was of three strands of 2 BWG (0.284 inches, 7.21mm diameter) galvanised wire.

Design Problems in Laying

This part of the article takes no account of the seamanship in-volved, which was considerable, just noting some aspects of de-sign inadequacies.

The 1856 & 1857 cables were made by Glass, Elliott and R S Newall; Glass, Elliott applied the armour wires with a left hand lay to ease cable handling when coiling it clockwise in a ca-ble tank; but R S Newall with a right hand lay, as was customary for rope manufacture. During a lay the tension on the cable as it leaves the ship is high, from the weight of cable below it that has not yet reached the seabed, and the cable armouring will tend to untwist; then as it nears the sea-bed the tension is reduced and it regains its original form. Just

splicing cables with opposite lay would twist the joint in opposite directions, severing the core; it was rapidly decided to have just one joint between the two cable types in mid-ocean and have a heavy Y-shaped splice box to grip the armouring at either end, with a weight hung below it. This was gently lowered to the ocean bed before the two ships sailed off. Two ships were in any case necessary to lay the whole system, so each was loaded with its own cable type. It worked.

The paying out gear was based on that used successfully on rel-atively shallow water systems. On the 1856 system it was found wanting; the American ship having rather vicious brakes, the British ship ineffective brak-ing. This was rectified for the 1857 lay.

In 1865 & 1866 a single ship, the Great Eastern, was used to lay the whole cable.

In 1865 cable lay the cable broke and was lost overboard in deep water. They grappled for it and began to raise it when the hoist-ing rope broke – they grappled three more times, twice catch-ing the cable but breaking the hoisting rope - after which they

ran out of hoisting rope. In 1866 they took a new design of grap-nel rope based on the improved cable armouring and, having successfully laid the fourth trans-Atlantic cable, went on to recover the end of the 1865 cable and completed that system too.

Coda

In any manufacturing enterprise problems arise, some which re-main vivid in the memories of the people who dealt with them, but which can be kept out of the public eye for fear of putting off potential customers. One won-ders just how many more there were than the few mentioned above. But two out of four suc-cessful cable systems made with, in hindsight, too many un-knowns was a triumph.

Richard Buchanan graduated from Manchester University with a BSc Tech in Electrical Engineering in 1962.

He joined Standard Telephones & Cables at North Woolwich, as a junior engineer designing landline carrier equipment.

He transferred to submarine repeater development in 1972, then became a manufacturing engineer. The submarine business became part of Alcatel from which he retired in 2002.

Telecoms consulting of submarine cable systemsfor regional and trans-oceanic applications

.com

Back Reflection by Stewart Ash

The Italian Perspective

In these articles we have provided some information on the history of submarine cable manufacture in the UK, which dominated the industry for well over 100 years, in France (Issue 47) and Japan (Issues 48, 50 & 51) but until now we have neglected the Italians.

The first submarine cable to be landed in Italy was laid between Spezia and Corsica in 1854 by John W Brett (1805-63) as part of his abortive plan to connect France with Algeria (Issue 73). The flowing year the Italian government contracted Glass, Elliot and Co to lay a cable across the Straits of Messina. Malta was connected to Sicily in 1859, and R S Newall & Co won a contract to connect Otranto to Valona in Albania the same year.

This was a lightweight cable which only lasted a few months. It was replaced by a more robust cable made by W. T. Henley’s Telegraph Works Co in 1864. Further short, regional cables followed in the 1860s and 1870s, but all these were manufactured in the UK and all were laid by British cable ships.

Pirelli & C SpA was founded by Giovanni Battista Pirelli (1848-1932), in 1872, and quickly established itself in the market for rubber goods and later electrical cables. In 1884, Pirelli took the decision to enter the submarine cable market and built a cable armouring factory in La Spezia; the gutta percha covered core was made in its Milan factory. Much of the machinery was purchased in the UK and imported but some of it was made to Pirelli’s own

designs. The factory started producing armoured cable in 1886.

In parallel with building the factory, an order was placed with Robert Thompson & Sons in Sunderland for a cable ship the Citta di Milano (I). She had the tank capacity to carry about 500km of cable and her first project was to lay the Massaua

to Assab cable across the Red Sea in 1887. Cable production for this system was entrusted to Signor E Jona, a close colleague of Giovanni Pirelli; he was to earn the sobriquet “the father of the cable laying art in Italy”.

Pirelli continued to win contracts for regional cables in the Mediterranean until 1919, but unfortunately the Citta di

Milano (I) was wrecked off the coast of Sicily, at F u l i c u d i I s l a n d , during a cable repair o p e r a t i o n . She was r e p l a c e d by the Citta di Milano (II), in 1921. The Founders of Pirelli

This vessel had been built in 1905 by F. Schichau & Co in Danzig, then in the Kingdom of Prussia, for Norddeutsche SeekabelWerke (NSW) and was originally named CS Grossherzog von Oldenburg. She was ceded to Italy by Germany under an order from the Allied Reparations Commission, set up after the First World War.

In 1924, Italcable Servizi Cablographici (Italcable) deployed a massive 8,300nm network connecting Italy and Spain to Argentina and Brazil via the Azores, Canary Islands and the Cape Verde Islands. From Horta in the Azores connection was made via the new Western Union cable to New York, supplied by Telcon. The major manufacturing contracts were

split between NSW, Siemens Bros and Telcon although Pirelli won the contact for the 963nm (1,787km) link from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands to St Vincent in the Cape Verde Islands. The Citta Di Milano (II) installed 2,838nm (5,265km) of this network, which went into service in 1925.

By the end of the 1920s the first submarine telephone cables began to appear in the Mediterranean, Pirelli’s first contract was for an 81km cable between Zara and Lussino Island in Dalmatia, then part of the Kingdom of Italy but now in Croatia. The cable could carry three simultaneous voice circuits. In 1932, Pirelli

manufactured and installed a 270km cable between mainland Italy and Sardinia. This was, for many years, the world’s longest submarine telephone cable. From 1933-1935 new Pirelli cables were laid across the Straits of Messina which could carry 27 simultaneous voice circuits.

All these cables had ben insulated with gutta percha, but following the discovery of polyethylene by ICI in 1933, Pirelli began work on developing its own polyethylene based cable insulation. The compound they arrived at was called Arcorene, named after Pirelli’s Arco Felice factory in the Gulf of Naples.

During the Second World War, the Citta di Milano (II) was scuttled to avoid it falling into

Allied hands. After the War Pirelli resumed submarine cable manufacture and by 1957 it was able to supply a 240km repeatered system between Civitavecchia on mainland Italy and the island of Sardinia. This system contained six repeaters, supplied by Standard Telephones & Cables (STC), with a repeater span of 38.km and capable of carrying 60 simultaneous telephone calls. In 1962, Pirelli manufactured the cable for 404km system connecting Cagliari in Sardinia with Trapani in Sicily. Again the repeaters were supplied by STC and the system was capable of 120 x 4kHz voice channels.

In 1966, Italcable lost its telegraph route to the USA when

Citta di Milano (II)

Muirhead Telegraph Key

Western Union abandoned its New York to Horta in the Azores system. As a consequence Italcable leased circuits in TAT-2 and TAT-4.

Through the 1970s although Pirelli supplied cable for a few regional systems the Italian Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications preferred to award submarine cable supply contracts to STC, either on its own behalf or in partnership with telecommunication operators from other countries.

In 1975, two 200 megawatt D.C. power cables were laid across the Straits of Bonifacio one made by Pirelli and the other by Câbles de Lyon.

Pirelli’s opportunity to compete with the “big four” submarine systems supplier, Alcatel Submarcom (selling Alcatel Câble & CIT products), AT&T Submarine Systems Inc., STC Submarine Systems Ltd and Japan Inc. (Fujitsu, NEC and OCC) came with the advent of fibre optic technology. In 1985, Pirelli supplied what was probably the first commercial submarine fibre optic system in Europe, between mainland Italy and the Island of Elba (under Italian sovereignty since 1860).

In 1989, Pirelli took delivery of a new cableship, the Giulio Verne. This was designed as a multipurpose vessel to lay

power as well as telecoms cables. She was 133m long, with a 30m beam and dead weight of 11,000 tonnes. She was uniquely equipped with a massive rotating platform capable of handling 8,000 tonnes of cable.

In 1989-90 Pirelli introduced a new slotted core cable design, and over 2,500km of this cable was manufactured and installed. By the beginning of the 1990’s Pirelli had become a full turnkey supplier, capable of supplying repeaterless systems and, by 1996, with its own repeater design it could also provide long distance DWDM optically amplified systems.

In 1998, Pirelli introduced an 18.5mm cable design for the 1,225km LEV-1 system, followed by 14,463km for TAT-14 in 1999 and 2,482km for East Asia Crossing in 2000. The same year Pirelli confirmed its position as a leading supplier of submarine systems by becoming a member of the Universal Jointing Consortium.

In 2004, Pirelli sold its interests in submarine cable systems to Alcatel Submarine Networks. Pirelli’s long association with submarine cables is still maintained today as the famous Pirelli calendar is ever present on cableships around the world.C S Giulio Verne

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.

The New Year is here!

And with every New Year, I hope that you have a space reserved on your wall for the 2015 Calendar and Map that are winging their way to you.

2015 is a big year for SubTel Forum, we are a n n o u n c i n g our first new product in almost 2 years, the bi-monthly I n d u s t r y Supplement . T h e S u p p l e m e n t is an idea that we’ve been kicking around for a while, with this product we’re aiming to fill a gap that we see in trusted information on the very basics of our industry. There are resources abound regarding submarine cables, but very few on the actual basics and who’s who of industry segments, such as suppliers or

surveyors. Beginning February, we will be producing the new Industry Supplement every other month to shed light on

those specific segments of the industry, we’ll be talking about the general practices and background of that segment, as well as i n c l u d i n g s t a t i s t i c s and analysis of recently t r a c k e d a c t i v i t i e s . Adding to the stats and analysis, we will also be p r o d u c i n g c o m p a n y profiles and s t a t e m e n t s

from the important names in those specific industry segments.

We hope this, like other SubTel Forum products, will become a useful tool in business planning and decision making in the months ahead.

As always, your thoughts and feedback are invaluable to our content and release planning. If you have specific themes or events that you would like us to delve into, please get in touch and let us know. We aim to make SubTel Forum relevant to our ever-changing industry, your input and feedback is vital to us.

AD SPACES:Full Page Spread:11” wide x 8.5” tallPrice: $5,000 USD

Single: 5.5” wide x 8.5” tallPrice: $3,500 USD

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THEMES:• February: Suppliers• April: Surveyors• June: Installers• August: Finance, Legal

& Permitting• October: Maintenance

& Repair• December: Cable Developers

Adverts should be provided in PDF format.

Kristian Nielsen literally grew up in the business since his first ‘romp’ on a BTM cableship in Southampton at age 5. He has been with Submarine Telecoms Forum for a little over 6 years; he is the originator of many products, such as the Submarine Cable Map, STF Today Live Video Stream, and the STF Cable Database. In 2013, Kristian was appointed Vice President and is now responsible for the vision, sales, and over-all direction and sales of SubTel Forum.

+1 703.444.0845

knielsen@subtelforum.com

System Suppliers

1

Supplement

ConferencesPTC 201518-21 January 2015Honolulu, Hawaii USAWebsite

January:

Global Outlook

March:

Finance & Legal

May:

Subsea Capacity

July:

Regional Systems

September:

Offshore Energy

November:

System Upgrades

Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc.21495 Ridgetop Circle, Suite 201Sterling, Virginia 20166, USAISSN No. 1948-3031

PUBLISHER: Wayne NielsenMANAGING EDITOR: Kevin G. Summers

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS:Stewart Ash, Richard Buchanan, Kieran Clark, Steve Dawe, Ning Jing, Wang Ke, Stephen Nielsen, Michael Ruddy, Nicole Starosielski, Wang Yanpu

Contributions are welcomed. Please forward to the Managing Editor at editor@subtelforum.com.

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.

Copyright © 2014 Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc.

It’s snowing here in Virginia as I’m writing this edition of my Coda. Traffic is backed

up all around Washington, D.C. and commuters are stuck in their cars listening to the weath-er on the radio and wishing they had just taken the day off. The majority of those commut-ers can barely operate a moving vehicle under the best of condi-tions, much less in this dusting of snow that people from New England would hardly even no-tice. Yes, it’s winter in Virginia.

Personally, I’ve abandoned the idea of driving into the city in the snow. My time is too valu-able to waste sitting in traffic looking at the taillights of a Prius. I have a nice little office in my barn with a space heat-er that keeps things nice and toasty. And my co-workers will tell you that not only do I work

better from home, it also makes their work more pleasant. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by that, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings.

It’s really an amazing thing to me that I can work on an in-ternational magazine from my barn. It’s also amazing that the culminated knowledge of human civ-ilization is a v a i l a b l e on a device the size of a pocket calcula-tor. But the fact that I can work seamlessly in the city or in the country, that just blows

my mind. I can stop work and have lunch with my wife, or help my kids with their school work, and then go right back to the office and layout another article. This is truly an amazing time to live.

Well, that’s it for another issue. I hope everyone has a good time

at PTC. I’m going to go have a snowball fight with my kids now.

Kevin G. Summers is the Editor of Submarine Telecoms Forum and has been supporting the submarine fibre optic cable industry in various roles since 2007. Outside of the office, he is an author of fiction whose works include ISOLATION WARD 4, LEGENDARIUM and THE MAN WHO SHOT JOHN WILKES BOOTH.

+1.703.468.0554

editor@subtelforum.com

Voiceof the

Industry