International Bodies Focus on Subsea Cable Protection

In the wake of two cable cuts in the Baltic Sea by a Chinese-flagged ship, the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations Agency for Digital Technologies, and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) last week formed the International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience.

The new entity will – through the ICPC – promote the safeguarding of undersea cables and highlight the importance of telecommunications networks.

In a separate development months ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) funded a visionary project to reroute internet traffic to space in case of disruption to subsea cables.

Why the sudden focus on subsea cables?

Subsea cables, which carry 95% of all intercontinental internet traffic and an estimated $10 million of financial transactions daily, have often suffered crippling and time-consuming repair cuts and faults.

With the rise of suspicious subsea cable cuts so far this year and the disruption they cause, NATO launched a strategic effort to protect the flow of subsea cable data in the event of damage to this critical infrastructure. The NATO effort will protect civilian and military data.

In November alone, two subsea cables crossing the Baltic Sea were cut by a Chinese-flagged ship dragging anchors for a reported 100 miles. The ship was sequestered, searched, and searched. In February, three crucial cables in the Red Sea were cut and out of commission for many months in a war zone in the Middle East.

In March, cuts to several subsea cables caused interruptions in 13 African countries. That led to operational downtime for all businesses connected to the internet, including banks, where bank customers could not carry out banking transactions for hours.

The U.N., ITU, and ICPC subsea cable undertaking

Amid rising tensions, the ITU, U.N., and International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) joined forces to form an advisory body on submarine cable resilience that will promote best practices for governments and industry.

“Resilience is no doubt an important and timely topic regarding submarine cable infrastructure,” said Ryan Wopschall, an ICPC executive and submarine cable infrastructure expert as Principal at Wopschall Consulting LLC, in a LinkedIn post. "This is an exciting next step that the ICPC is taking with the ITU to address the resilience of submarine cable infrastructure. We cannot wait to see what the ITU, ICPC, and Advisory Body produce through this effort."

Advisory body details

The entity is co-chaired by Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Dr. Bosun Tijani, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Communications Authority of the Republic of Portugal, Prof. Sandra Maximiano.

The ITU explained the advisory body will address ways to improve cable resilience by promoting best practices for governments and industry players “to ensure the timely deployment and repair of submarine cables, reduce the risks of damage, and enhance the continuity of communications over the cables.”

NATO’s subsea to satellite shot

NATO has been concerned about the resilience of the subsea cable network amid continuing cuts, fast-rising geopolitical tension, and hostilities in many parts of the world.

NATO has funded what it calls “a visionary project to reroute internet to space in case of disruption to subsea cables.”

As subsea cable cuts and faults have piled up, NATO and others have looked skyward for emerging satellite services to be a bigger piece of the resiliency pie. The NATO plan is to make the internet less vulnerable to disruption by rerouting the flow of information into space if undersea cables are attacked or accidentally severed. The $2.5 million project, launched on July 31, was partially funded by NATO’s Science for Peace and Security program (SPS).

Building a subsea cable to satellite data flow

The NATO project aims to produce a working prototype within two years, with a demonstration planned at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. “The Hybrid Space/Submarine Architecture Ensuring Infosec of Telecommunications (HEIST) consortium leading the project aims to develop a hybrid network combining submarine cables and satellite communications to ensure a continuous flow of data,” NATO said.

The HEIST group will bring together existing technologies, address legal and jurisdictional challenges, and foster international collaboration between NATO Allies and partners, including the US, Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland, according to NATO.

The bottom line on protecting subsea cables

The creation by the U.N.-ITU (and with help from the ICPC) of the new advisory group should help elevate the issue of subsea cable systems' safety and protection. The cuts this year alone have transformed the issue far beyond water cooler talk in the corporate world to continuing daily news internationally.

The NATO traffic routing from subsea cables to satellites HEIST project sounds like a shared goal – greater resiliency that has not been a broad viable answer to the 150 to 200 cable faults projected by the close of 2024.