The PEACE subsea cable cut in the Red Sea, reported by a number of news outlets early last week, could be a long-term issue, with repairs taking months.
The breakage is located some 1,450 kilometres from Zafarnaat, Egypt, although the actual reason for the break is not known.
However, the Red Sea area is affected by issues that are somewhat different from those troubling many other routes, notably Houthi attacks on ships passing by Yemeni water since November 2023. It has been suggested that some abandoned ships have drifted and damaged subsea cables.
According to the Data Centre Dynamics website, this latest repair is expected to take several months – and not just due to complexity. The subsea connectivity industry is suffering from a lack of cable ships despite several new vessels entering service in the last 18 months; many projects have apparently been delayed, and some re-routed.
The problem seems to be that there are more than 400 or so subsea cables in operation, with dozens more due to enter service over the next few years. However, the global supply of ships that can actually lay and maintain these cables is small: just 60 ships worldwide. Most of them are not new either.
The 25,000km PEACE cable (PEACE was originally an acronym for Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe) connects 14 points across 13 countries; France, Egypt, Cyprus, Kenya, the Maldives, Malta, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Seychelles, Singapore, Somalia, Tunisia and the UAE.
We reported on Monday that UAE-based operator du had signed a partnership deal to extend the PEACE subsea cable system into the UAE and Gulf region.
Severing of submarine cables is not just a concern for cable companies. As we reported at the time, the ITU, the United Nations specialised agency for digital technology, last year announced plans to set up an International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience whose aim is to “promote dialogue and collaboration on potential ways and means to improve resilience of this critical infrastructure that powers global communications and the digital economy”.
