ICPC Study On Subsea Cable Outages: Less In The West & More In East Asia

The International Cable Protection Committee has conducted a statistical study using an 18 year time series that includes 3,000 repairs. A link to the article is attached to this post. A fault is any damage to a cable that affects performance or might in the future (like a shunt fault).

1. Fault rates per kilometer of cable have dived over the last two decades. Total annual repairs range between 150 and 200, yet total subsea cable mileage has risen from 900,000 kilometers in 2008 to 1.4 million today. However, this underestimates the decline as fibre pair mileage is probably 5x greater today than in 2008 as fiber pairs per cable have risen from 4 pairs in 2008 to 16 pairs today.

2. Faults in European waters and the Atlantic have dramatically declined due to better burial of subsea cables, distributing cable maps to commercial ships, more careful cable routing, and less fishing in some waters. For example, Northwest Europe, which includes Ireland, UK, France, Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands, and Norway, has seen per annum faults decline from 40 to 45 to 10 to 15.

3. However, due to regulations, repair times are sharply rising as governments insist on issuing repair permits even though it is really unnecessary. Indeed, in Northwestern Europe repair permits are not required as long as companies agree to follow certain procedures. Governments should adopt the European approach.

4. Causes and Their Relative Contributions To Faults
A. Fishing: 28%. B. Anchoring: 14%. C. Fishing/Anchoring: 38%. D. Mother Nature: 17%; Weather, Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Sea Currents. E. Wet Segment Equipment Failure: 3%. Optical Amplifers, Branching Units, structural cable failure.

Comments: This analysis uses anonymized data that may obscure the true causes. The combined fishing-anchoring category reflects in part the fact that postmortems do not always clearly identify the cause. In particular, fishing boats may drag anchors as well as cargo ships. The Mother Nature category includes deep sea current abrasion of cables leading to shunt faults as well as undersea debris and mud slides known collectively as turbidity currents.

5. Ships often drag their anchors without knowing it and cause mayhem. A ship off Sicily in 2008 dragged its anchor for 300 kilometers and damaged six cables. A Chinese container ship in 2003 did the same during severe weather to avoid capsizing and knocked out four undersea networks. An anchor is light weight relative to the ship and if the chain is not deployed, can be mistaken for opposing currents or wind.

6. Faults are concentrated in Northwest Europe and East Asia with the former shrinking while the latter sharply rises. East Asia accounts for 40% of global repairs due to intensive fishing. The Chinese fishing fleet uses stow anchors to attach static nets to the sea floor. These anchors can penetrate 3 meters deep in shallow waters whereas most cable are buried 2 meters deep.

For the full analysis, click https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3233/NICSP260018. 

A ICPC Chart Showing Causes of Subsea Cable Damage As Percentages


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