Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc.’s Post

Submarine cables are critical for global communication but are susceptible to disruptions. Recently, the APG cable system encountered a failure on its S8 branch near Thailand, severing all international connections along that route. The cause remains unknown, and no repair schedule has been disclosed. Concurrently, the AAE-1 cable system is grappling with ongoing issues on its S1H5 branch, which connects Vietnam to Singapore, resulting in multiple delays in capacity restoration since May 2024. Although repairs on another branch were completed in September 2024, the S1H5 branch has missed three deadlines, with restoration now expected by December 5. Vietnam depends on five major submarine cable systems—AAG, AAE-1, APG, SMW3, and IA—providing over 20 Tbps of utilized bandwidth and a total capacity of 34 Tbps. About 90% of the nation’s international internet capacity connects to hubs in Asia, while the remaining 10% links to Europe and the Americas. These systems face an average of 15 disruption incidents each year. Previously, repair durations averaged 1-2 months, but these have recently lengthened, leading to more extensive service interruptions. To enhance the reliability of its international connectivity, Vietnam's Ministry of Information and Communications is implementing a Digital Infrastructure Strategy. This initiative aims to launch at least two new submarine cable systems by 2025 and expand to eight additional systems by 2030, increasing redundancy to meet a minimum 1+2 backup standard for uninterrupted international communication. #AsiaRisk #CyberAttacksandDataLoss #Vietnam Get a full accounting of the security situation in Asia by subscribing to Security Asia. Subscribe now--free of charge--at Substack https://lnkd.in/gPtAUrsX https://lnkd.in/g2fPYydM

Vietnam Internet Disruptions as Three Submarine Cables Fail Three of Vietnam's five submarine cables failed, severely impacting internet connectivity and access to offshore websites. #aae1 #apg #cablefault #internet #intraasia #submarinecable #telecoms #vietnam https://lnkd.in/e-6GT5u3

The Caribbean's ISPs have significantly improved performance and network consistency over the last four years. This report by Mark Giles looks at the top-performing markets and explores the impact of fiber and satellite technologies, which have led to improved broadband accessibility in the region. https://ookla.d.pr/KhRIk5

2024 East Africa Submarine Cable Outage Report By Internet Society
July 23, 2024 On 12 May 2024, two fiber optic submarine cables—SEACOM and EASSy—were damaged off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, significantly reducing Internet connectivity in multiple East African countries. The cause of the damage is a suspected dragging ship anchor, a common source of submarine cable cuts. All cables were repaired as of 3 June 2024—approximately three weeks after the initial damage. This report highlights the impact of these submarine cable cuts on local connectivity and the importance of developing resilience to maintain an acceptable level of service in the face of such faults. The Importance of Submarine Cables Fibre optic submarine cables are critical communication infrastructures that form the backbone of international Internet connectivity. Currently, around 559 submarine cable systems span 1.5 million kilometers, connecting the smallest Pacific islands to the largest economies of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In 2009, the first submarine fiber cables were activated on East Africa’s coast, providing an alternative to satellite connectivity to many countries in the sub-region. Not only did these cables reduce latency in the sub-region by 400%, but they also reduced Internet costs by more than 50%—at the time, one megabit per second (Mbps) of satellite capacity cost roughly USD 2,000 per month or higher. Since then, five more submarine fiber cables have been commissioned to connect East African countries south of Kenya (Figure 1). While these submarine cables predominantly benefit the countries that connect directly to them via coastal landing stations, neighboring landlocked countries also benefit via terrestrial cross-border fiber connections. For example, a terrestrial cross-border fiber cable connecting Kampala, Uganda, to the landing station in Mombasa, Kenya, delivers submarine capacity to Uganda, helping to reduce costs and latency. Table 1 shows the submarine cables and terrestrial cross-border cables that provide connectivity to each country in the sub-region.

As Eastern Africa continues to suffer internet disruptions due to the 12th of May, 2024 cutoffs in the EASSy and SEACOM submarine cables just off the east coast of South Africa and full repairs a couple of days away, two Ugandan Internet Engineers⏤ Mark Tinka from TransmissionCo and James Byaruhanga of Roke Telkom and Roke Cloud examine four recent submarine cable interruptions across the African continent. With some of the older cables nearing their end-of-life window; internet traffic demand to Africa growing at a CAGR of 44% and 90% of this traffic reliant on submarine cables, the duo make a case for the urgent realisation of more cable projects such as 2Africa, Equiano, and PEACE to increase the reliability of the continent's connectivity. As traffic demand grows and the continent's reliance on the internet for vital service delivery and economic growth soars, the duo conclude that it is also not enough to have newer cables replacing older ones but to also have as many alternatives as is commercially feasible to avoid significant service interruptions or worse, a total continent-wide Internet blackout. https://lnkd.in/dwzmc2f6 

When cable cuts occur they often result in disruptions to Internet connectivity, knocking a network, city, or country offline. However, two recent cable cuts that occurred in the Baltic Sea resulted in little-to-no observable impact to the affected countries. Here's why. https://lnkd.in/dP7aHEHq

Interesting read 👇

Excellent summary of East African submarine cable disruptions in 2024 from Internet Society, including useful insights into cross-border connectivity and the impact of IXPs in the region. https://lnkd.in/eU7TykFn

An insightful assessment of the impact of the submarine cables cut in East and South Africa is available on the Internet Society Pulse platform. https://lnkd.in/gMdbePsb