IPCC Estimates Of Causes of Subsea Cable Faults and Outages: 2026 Submarine Networks World Conference
National security analysts please note, there is no sabotage category because there are no credible cases of sabotage. The IPCC study estimates 3,224 subsea fibre optic cable repairs over the last 18 years. It classifies 84% of outages as caused by fishing and anchors, 5% due to abrasion, 4% due to plant failure (subsea optical amplifiers or PFEs), and 7% due to geological disturbances such as turbidity currents induced by earthquakes or heavy rains or debris slides in subterranean caverns. Abrasion often leads to shunt faults where water reaches the power conductor.