Smart telecom cables: climate change hope for Pacific or submarine spying tech?
- An international team is working on new monitoring technology to be used on subsea telecommunications cables
- Proponents say it will provide data on climate change and tsunami threats. Sceptics say it could be used for espionage
Over the next two years the number of undersea telecommunications cables under the Pacific Ocean is to grow by nearly twenty-five per cent as six new projects come online.
The new cables will not only connect millions of island residents across thousands of miles of ocean, but could also be used in the fight against what Pacific Island leaders say is their most pressing existential threat: climate change.
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An international team of scientists has been working for nearly a decade to get ocean monitoring sensors included on telecommunications cables – a project dubbed “Scientific Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications”, or Smart.
By communicating real-time data about the ocean, cables with Smart capability could provide governments advance warning of seismic events and tsunami, and give scientists a continuous flow of information about changes in the world’s oceans caused by climate change.
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But though this may sound like a silver-bullet solution to two of the Pacific’s most pressing challenges, security concerns have kept the project from getting out of the lab and into the water.
The project is headed by the Joint Task Force (JTF), a partnership of three United Nations agencies – the International Telecommunication Union, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and the World Meteorological Organisation. Proponents say that it is a no-brainer to equip the next generation of undersea cables with the Smart capabilities. “Thousands of miles of subsea fibre-optic cables are laid every year,” said Preston Thomas, a consultant working on the Smart cable project in an industry publication.
“At the same time, hundreds of millions of dollars of oceanographic research funding is spent to obtain limited and incomplete deep oceanographic and seismic data.”
But the project has been a non-starter with the private sector, which has expressed concern that the sensors could be used by malicious actors to gain access to the data flowing through the cables, and that the sensors could be used to pinpoint the location of submarines down to as little as five metres. Bruce Howe, chairman of the JTF, said that from a communications perspective the sensors and the telecommunications cables they are placed on are completely isolated from each other – and that in practice, it would be extremely difficult to actually use the sensors to track submarines.
However, at this stage the private sector’s unwillingness to support the project meant the task force had been dependent on development banks and governments to get it into the water, Howe said.
The JTF has pilot programmes in the works for the waters off Italy, New Caledonia and Indonesia. Howe said he expected that within a few years, governments in places like Indonesia and Vanuatu, which are critically threatened by tsunami, undersea earthquakes and sea-level rise, could soon require the sensors on cables laid in their waters.
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When the next generation of cables are draped across the ocean floor in just a few years’ time, Smart capability could be included in up to 10 per cent of projects, Howe said.
“Countries need to assert their authority about this – yes, telecommunications is critical infrastructure, but climate monitoring and disaster warning are really important,” Howe said. ■
The Japan-Guam-Australia South Cable is an estimated US$25 million effort owned by Google, Australia’s Academic Research Network, and RTI Cable. It is scheduled to come online next year.
The Coral Sea Cable System will link Sydney with Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea and Honiara in the Solomon Islands. Most of the US$101 million project will be funded by Australia, while up to a third of the cost will be shouldered by the Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands governments. The project includes a domestic cable linking to the Solomon Islands.
Interchange Cable Network 2 is owned by the independent Vanuatu company Interchange. The estimated US$32 million project would connect the Solomon Islands with Luganville and Port Vila in Vanuatu.
The Manatua Cable will link the Cook Islands with Niue, Samoa and French Polynesia. The government of New Zealand has said it will contribute US$15 million towards the cable, which is owned by OPT French Polynesia, Samoa Submarine Cable Company, Avaroa Cable, and Telecom Niue.
Southern Cross Next will connect Los Angeles with Samoa, Kiribati, Tokelau, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia. It is owned by the same shareholders behind the Southern Cross cable: Spark New Zealand, Singtel Optus, Verizon and Telstra.
SxS is a proposed cable connecting Los Angeles and Guam, scheduled to come into service in 2022. It is owned by RTI cable, which has invested more than US$500 million in connectivity between the US, Australia and Asia.
