Network operator ponders building a new submarine cable – on land
- Reference: 1762149489
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/11/03/seacom_africa_submarine_land_cable/
- Source link:
Senior Transmission Architect Nic Breytenbach explained that apparent contradiction to The Register by pointing out that submarine cables run up and down Africa’s east and west coasts, but that no single connection crosses the continent. When submarine cables on the east coast – which mostly carry traffic to Europe or Asia – experience trouble, carriers must route traffic south around the Cape of Good Hope, then all the way up Africa’s west coast. Capacity on submarine cables is hard to find, and expensive when available.
The journey around Africa, or routing onto alternative east coast cables, therefore adds unwelcome cost and latency that carriers could avoid by using a connection that cuts across the continent.
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But no such connection exists. Breytenbach said the combination of rugged terrain that make construction extremely difficult, the need for energy sources along the route, and political instability have all made it infeasible to build a cable on Seacom’s preferred route from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s sliver of South Atlantic coastline.
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Seacom thinks a submarine cable could make the route viable, because the tech used for such links doesn’t need energy sources along the way and could run underwater or through swamps whenever possible, making it harder for miscreants to dig it up.
One reason telecom cables attract attacks is the value of the copper they contain. But submarine cables can use aluminum to carry current and won’t have copper inside because they use optic fibers as a medium. Breytenbach thinks that will reduce the likelihood of opportunistic attacks because metal thieves know they can’t score a payday by stealing aluminum.
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One challenge to overcome, Breytenbach said, is that designers of submarine cables assume they’ll operate in the cold depths of the ocean. A cable running on Seacom’s preferred route would start just north of the Equator and end at just five degrees south, a very different environment to that envisioned by hardware designers.
But Breytenbach points to the existence of a submarine cable in Lake Tanganyika as evidence submarine systems can be adapted to different environments. The fact that Nokia sells hardened repeaters for submarine cables also makes him optimistic that the hardware needed to build a cross-Africa submarine cable on land is possible.
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However, he acknowledges that Seacom will need to address many other issues to make this idea a reality, among them diplomatic negotiations to secure the route, arranging timely maintenance, and figuring out how to transport the cable because the ships used to build submarine cables pack in hundreds of kilometers of cabling. Seacom’s uncertain how to replicate that carrying capacity on land, especially as parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter.
“To be honest we are just exploring it at this stage,” he said, and the company is putting more energy into delivering a new cable called Seacom 2.0 that will connect Africa, Europe, India, and Singapore.
Like many other cables, Seacom 2.0 will run through the Red Sea, an area where recent cable cuts have [9]caused [10]disruptions .
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Breytenbach told The Register that problems in the Red Sea are one reason Seacom wants a submarine cable to run across Africa.
“There are some significant challenges,” he said. “But we really think it is doable.” ®
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the ships used to build submarine cables pack in hundreds of kilometers of cabling
1. Put the cable on a ship
2. Move the ship across the land
3. $$$
Paging Fitzcarraldo! Fitzcarraldo to the white courtesy phone please!
Re: the ships used to build submarine cables pack in hundreds of kilometers of cabling
Get Werner Herzog to lay the cable, and Les Blank can make a doco about it.
Political instability nixes it
Doesn't matter whether it's mostly in swamps and rivers, it would be very shallow and trivially destroyed.
It's far more difficult to cut a cable 100m down at the bottom of the Red Sea in a busy shipping lane, than to cut one five metres down a few hundred km from the nearest town.
It's also far easier to repair that Red Sea cable.
Re: Political instability nixes it
The optical fibre and aluminium might be worthless to copper nickers, but unfortunately that will not stop them cutting the cable first to find out.
Re: Political instability nixes it
Not to mention that aluminium has it's own scrap value - less than copper, but definitely not zero.
Re: Political instability nixes it
I remember one lot nicking aluminium beer kegs, melting them down to cast ingots and then having the cheek to send them to the Industrial half of the Department of Industrial and Forensic Science for certificates of analysis.
Re: Political instability nixes it
In the UK we continue to get imbeciles dragging up fibre cables believing them to be copper. And though I would love to see their disappointed faces, I only know when my train is delayed.
"parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter."
Presumably if you are going to dig a trench and lay cable, the access would need to be improved.
I shouldn't be surprised if building a railway along the cable's route, as you go, would be a comparatively small incremental cost.
Loved the [1]Fitzcarraldo reference. They don't make [2]Claudias movies like that anymore. :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo
[2] https://www.legrandaction.com/wp-content/uploads/fitzcarraldo-02.jpg
Re: "parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter." so Improve access and build a railway
100% this if 2 for profit entities and however many governments could cooperate. The passenger and cargo carrying across Africa of a reasonable railway using tunnels and viaducts, with appropriate security guarantees from the African union, on top o a viable route for data, might make this workable. It would be good for the environment, and economy, how much less co2 and €£$ would it cost to send a long train of containers close to where they are going vs a diesel truck with no secured route? How much faster would it be when responding to a natural disaster, or even just plain old peaks in demand?
bootnote: Whilst this bundling makes it feasible, whether the requisite cooperation can be achieved, and sustained long enough is an open question, even in a single comparatively stable country this is not always a given, in this scenario it would take some doing.
Re: "parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter."
A railway sounds eminently sensible, not least because "then you'd have a railway", which is almost always a good thing.
Grabs coat. The anorak, with a copy of Ian Allan Motive Power in the left hand pocket.
Breytenbach thinks that will reduce the likelihood of opportunistic attacks because metal thieves know they can’t score a payday by stealing aluminum.
In $DAY_JOB we install lots of fibre in the public realm and I can assure you thieves still think they're cutting through copper.
i'd be more concerned about that cable crossing some tinpot dictators region who decides to add some optical splices and start selling hacker access
And don't rule out private enterprise either.
Valuable
I hope it has no instrinsic value or they bury it very deep or it'll get dug up. It might anyway if someone thinks it might be copper. Africa is not known for its wealth and effective law and order. That still has a way to go.
Re: Valuable
Africa has plenty of wealth and parts of the route will be more secure than parts of the USA. The problem is first what is now the UK but both then and now too often refers to itself as England even when it means a union including others, then the USA along with countless others along the way stole a lot of wealth from Africa already. Developing first, the societies that can accept immigration accidentally steal some of the top talent, add in the proxy wars of Russia/China vs US/Europe/Canada and there are enough unstable parts of the continent to make crossing it tricky.
Not on the route but Morocco for example has been a stable monarchy much, much longer than the USA has existed, they are peacefully democratising (albeit slowly) without outside interference, and even though the UK and the rest Europe were awful neighbours, Morocco now welcomes tourists and even migrants from Europe(the continent not the union) including the UK. Lesotho for example has a huge diamond reserve but ordinary people there see none of the benefits of the profits made selling them to this day.
Seems to me they'd be better looking at building a redundant mesh - so the system stays up as various routes get damaged. And set up an efficient repair process.
Why?
If they need more capacity around South Africa, then add more capacity there. Trying to build it across land on the least politically stable continent on the planet is going to be damned near impossible. Even once in place and operating, a regime change in any one of the nations it traverses will end up with threats to cut it unless $$$$ are forthcoming. Also, chances are that laying the cable around South Africa will be WAY cheaper than building a reasonably secure over/under land cable.
This sounds like a job for a cargo Zeppelin