Pipe dreams: Boosting undersea cabling capacity

Every day, almost 100% of all international data traffic that companies consume (that’s data transmitted across global offices across continents and oceans) is transported and routed via undersea cables laid on the ocean floor.

A single cable can accommodate tens of terabits of information per second and cuts across a wide swathe of applications and industries; telecom carriers, mobile operators, multinational corporations, governments, content providers, and research institutions all rely on submarine cables to send data around the world.

For enterprises, these cables ensure reliable data access and 99.99% uptime to keep the global economy running. Submarine cables are critical information infrastructure; there are no viable alternatives to undersea cables at this time.

As a leading ICT service provider and consortium partner behind some of the region’s largest submarine cable networks, Singtel is no stranger to the complexities of laying undersea cables.

While a typical submarine cabling project can take between 2.5 to 3 years to complete, it starts with the obtaining the necessary permits and licences from a host of sovereign nations whose waters the cable will cross.

The next step is to conduct an environmental impact assessment and geological survey of the seafloor. The survey ship will scan the seabed for the flattest corridor and shortest route between two landing points, and map areas to avoid including difficult terrain (small hill/deep holes), oil pipelines, fisheries, seismic activity and other classified/unpermitted zones.

Once the route is finalised, the required cable length is manufactured with special armour protection (single and double-layered) applied to prevent damage from harsh sea conditions. The core of the cables is not much larger than a Singapore 50-cent coin and is designed to withstand up to 8,000m of water pressure. The entire cable manufacturing process can take a year to complete.

The cables are subsequently loaded on board specially built cable-ships (most cable-ships can accommodate a maximum of 3000km of cables) that will slowly lay down the cable in trenches on the seabed as it is fed through a sea-plough.

If the entire length is more than what a cable-ship can load, it might take a few ships to work in tandem on different route sections. This requires significant sequencing and scheduling of resources and marine operations to ensure cabling or marine installation operations are completed on time. The last vessel between any two points will splice the cables together.

Finally, once the final splice is completed, engineers on both ends will conduct further commissioning or transmission tests before the handover to the cable owners. If there are issues in the cable or optical fibres, a cable-ship will be dispatched for repairs. It is not uncommon for cables to suffer damage by a ship anchor especially in shallow waters where huge ocean tankers ply the waters.

Given the vulnerabilities involved in laying and protecting cables on the ocean floor, Singtel’s long history and expertise in pioneering some of the earliest submarine cable investments should assure enterprises of the reliability of its submarine cables.

Take for example the INDIGO submarine cable connecting Australia and Southeast Asia which was operationalised in mid-2019. Singtel lent its expertise in cable route selection for the latest undersea cable. As one of the most technically experienced consortium partners, Singtel conducted extensive route feasibility studies and engaged qualified and experienced surveyors to conduct marine and geological surveys of the seabed.

These studies and surveys ensured optimal installation costs were matched with maximum cable protection to avoid disruption to global data traffic. For added security and investment protection, Singtel has established partnerships in various countries to ensure guard vessels were in place to monitor and surveil these routes for vulnerabilities.

Managing such a project requires significant knowhow, and as chair of the maintenance committee overseeing repairs of the cables, Singtel is well placed to assure enterprises of minimum cable faults and outages to their global business data operations. Historically, the telco has sustained an impressive service/maintenance record, posting zero fault tolerances on both the SEA-ME-WE 5 & FASTER undersea cable systems since they were operationalised.

Singtel operates the most extensive submarine cable network (spanning over 415,000km) around the region with a robust and resilient connection in Asia, Trans-Pacific, Europe, Southeast Asia and Oceania. Enterprises can leverage Singtel’s over 25Tbps cable capacity and over 60 cable landing points operated by Singtel and its partners, whose diversified cable routing paths collectively offer reliable and secure connectivity over 70 points-of-presence to any destination.

Singtel is also working with various partners on installing the 9,400km Asia Direct Cable (ADC), 10,500km Southeast Asia-Japan 2 (SJ2), and 19,200km Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SE-ME-WE6) submarine cable systems, all of which will be ready from 2023 to 2025. More recently in November 2022, it also announced it is building a 6,000km Asia Link Cable that is targeted for completion by the third quarter of 2025.

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