Comment by maxglute
2 days ago
Wonder if there's any industry reports on if there's more demand for subcable repair/servicing than typical/projected.
2 days ago
Wonder if there's any industry reports on if there's more demand for subcable repair/servicing than typical/projected.
There is a company, TeleGeography, that collects data about telecommunications industry. I recently read their recent blog post[1] about undersea cable breaks.
To summarize the article: On average, 199 cable faults per year from 2010-2023. Two thirds of these faults are caused by external forces like fishing vessels. Most cable faults are not made public. The preliminary data from 2024 suggests slightly more publicly disclosed faults, but nothing extraordinary. It is hard to detect the physical cause of cable damage. One likely cause is inexperienced crews on poorly maintained ships.
Personally, I do not believe all the cable faults in the Baltic sea are pure accidents. Russia (and China) have found the "perfect" way to test how we react and play their games. This testing is nothing new and it has happened before in many forms. It is likely that we have not even noticed some of the testing or they are not made public.
[1] https://blog.telegeography.com/is-it-sabotage-unraveling-the...