Undersea cables, vital to global connectivity, face natural threats and intentional sabotage. Europe, concerned by suspicious Russian and Chinese activities, invests in security and infrastructure, while NATO and the EU implement protection and resilience strategies
“If I had a nickel for every time a Chinese ship dragged its anchor to the bottom of the Baltic Sea near important cables,” he written Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis on X (formerly Twitter) on November 20, "I would have two nickels, which is not much, but it's strange that it happened twice." The first case dates back to October 2023, when the anchor of a Hong Kong-flagged, China-registered vessel, the NewNew Polar Bear, damaged two underwater data cables and a gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. The second incident occurred just over two weeks ago, when two undersea communications cables connecting Germany and Finland and Lithuania and Sweden respectively were presumably severed from the Yi Peng 3, a Chinese cargo ship.
The importance of submarine cables
On March 14, 2024, damage to four undersea cables resulted in widespread internet outages in 13 West and Central African countries, with prolonged (multi-day) nationwide outages in six countries impacting millions of Africans. The importance of these undersea cables is highlighted by another recent failure. In early March 2024, a break in three undersea fiber cables in the Red Sea disrupted approximately 25% of internet traffic in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. MainOne, one of the companies responsible for West African cables, has declared that probably "some form of seismic activity on the seabed caused the cable to rupture." While the exact cause is still undetermined, underwater geological hazards can also pose significant risks to offshore infrastructure.
The global submarine cable system and security challenges
Globally, more than 420 submarine cable systems (more than 1.8 million km of cables) connect more than 99% of all international digital data traffic. These cables can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and have become vital infrastructure for commercial and national interests.
These are some examples of a complex security challenge that Europe is learning to manage. Canergie highlights how in the last two years, “the suspicious Russian activities in the vicinity of critical underwater infrastructure in NATO's Northeast have alarmed European lawmakers regarding the security of their undersea data cables, which are critical to Internet connectivity and the functioning of European society. In response, NATO, the EU and individual European governments have introduced a plethora of initiatives aimed at increasing know-how, capabilities and awareness to protect these cables. If in the past there were no contingency plans for sabotage, now there are more maritime patrols, an attempt to create deeper intelligence connections and the beginning of a new relationship with the private sector”.
However, many of these efforts are still in their infancy. “For decades, European policymakers have sought to shield global assets, including telecommunications infrastructure, from securitization. Of the hundreds of cable outages that occur each year, most are caused by accidental human activities, such as fishing, or natural events, such as earthquakes. Europe benefits from the many redundancies that exist to protect against cable damage, whether intentional or unintentional. Although internet traffic had to be rerouted due to cable breaks in November, no widespread connectivity disruptions were reported in Germany, Finland, Lithuania or Sweden,” the experts at the US think tank point out.
Russian offensive activities against NATO submarine infrastructure
European governments and militaries have placed their initial focus on Russia, given the context of the war in Ukraine and a series of recent incidents linked to the Kremlin. Russia – they add analysts Sophia Besch and Erik Brown – has carried out underwater military exercises at depths below 6,000 meters, is “actively mapping” NATO members' critical underwater infrastructure, and is increasing its activity on and around cables in the Baltic Sea. “On several occasions, Russian ships were also known to be sailing near damaged European undersea data cables at the time of the rupture. Several Western officials believe that Russian intelligence agencies, and not the Chinese government, are responsible for the damage caused by the latest cable breaks in the Baltic Sea.”
Politicians are also concerned about the possibility that both the undersea cables themselves and the landing stations to which they connect can be intercepted by malicious actors for espionage purposes.
Concerns related to Chinese cables
Officials from United States and Europe have expressed concern about undersea data cables built and operated by China's Huawei Marine Networks (HMN) Tech, citing cybersecurity and espionage risks. The United States has pushed in a particular way to convince third countries, including European allies, to avoid installing cables owned by Chinese companies. As Politico wrote in 2022, the Europeans didn't always share this risk assessment, as proves the installation of the Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe Cable, a 25,000 kilometer project managed by HMN Tech connecting Singapore to Marseille, France, which became fully operational in December 2022.
“But China's increasingly overt support for Russia's war, and the involvement of Chinese-flagged ships in the two cable-cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea, has led Europe to begin viewing China as a threat to European security, including its submarine cables,” Canergie claims.
The position of the EU
Europe [and Italy] have realized the strategic, economic and political importance of submarine cables, digital infrastructures through which "over 98% of global telecommunications traffic passes and play a fundamental role in the resilience and security of digital connectivity”, we read in a note from the European Commission in announcing, in December, the awarding of a tranche of 142 million euros to 21 cable projects (including Sparkle), part of the billion expected. With the signing of the 21 grant agreements, the EU brought the total funding to €420 million under the first Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital Work Program. “CEF Digital places the security of this critical infrastructure at its core, ensuring that all recipients of CEF grants are entities controlled by the EU and that the cables that will be distributed are constructed with safe technology. Almost all financed cables are equipped with large geographic sensors to monitor activities in the vicinity and of early warning systems to protect the infrastructure itself”, specifies the note from the body led by von der Leyen.
The Commission states, in particular, that backbone networks, including submarine cables, are critical infrastructures that play an essential role in ensuring high-capacity connectivity and improving the resilience and security of digital connectivity, as underlined in rapporto Safer Together.
Europe's actions for the safety and resilience of submarine cables
In February 2024, the European Commission published the first "Recommendation on safe and resilient submarine cable infrastructure", encouraging Member States to conduct regular stress tests, improve information sharing between them and improve cable maintenance and repair capabilities.
Furthermore, in White paper on managing Europe's digital infrastructure needs and in the Recommendation on the safety and resilience of submarine cable infrastructure, the Commission has set out actions to assess and improve coordination between the Union and its Member States regarding the safety and resilience of existing and future submarine cable infrastructure. This includes mapping cables and related risks.
Calls for proposals for the CEF digital
CEF Digital is one of the financing instruments mentioned in the Recommendation to support the implementation of strategic cable projects.
Projects funded under the third round of CEF Digital calls aim to enhance global connections between Europe and Africa (for example, the Medusa Africa or Canalink-Morocco projects), the Middle East (such as the BlueMed East project) and Asia ( Arctic connectivity). The funding also aims to strengthen connections between Member States in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, Baltic Sea and continental Europe (including Central and Eastern Europe).
Further information on cable development projects can be found in the appendix (PDF).
The new projects will also support connectivity in the outermost regions and overseas countries and territories, such as in the Pacific Ocean (e.g. the NUANUA project), the Caribbean (e.g. the BCA project), the Canary Islands (e.g. the PENCAN-X project) and in the Azores-Madeira area (such as the Atlantic CAM – CM project).
All beneficiaries of CEF grants are EU-controlled entities and the cables to be installed must be built with safe technology. In addition to ensuring the secure transmission of terabytes of data per second, nearly all of the funded cables include SMART technologies, which act like large geographic sensors to monitor nearby activity, serving as early warning systems to protect the infrastructure itself.
The CEF Second Digital Work Program 2024-2027 allocates an additional €542 million to co-finance backbone connectivity projects, meaning that the Union's investment plans in these critical infrastructures in the current financial framework will amount to almost €1 billion euro.
The fourth call of the second CEF Digital is currently open for applications until February 13, 2025.
The Italian situation
Last October, infrastructure was at the center of the Italian-Libyan business forum, the first to take place in Libya after over a decade in the presence of Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister, and Abdulhameed Mohamed Dabaiba, Prime Minister of the unity government Libya national team. As writes Ants, submarine cables were also discussed.
Last May 24th, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Economic Cooperation announced the landing of the BlueMed submarine cable in Chania by Sparkle.
The BlueMed cable
BlueMed is the new Sparkle cable that connects Italy to France, Greece and several countries bordering the Mediterranean. It is part of the Blue & Raman submarine cable systems built in collaboration with Google and other operators that extend across the Middle East to Mumbai, India.
With four fiber pairs and an initial capacity of over 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per pair, BlueMed offers high-speed Internet connections and high-performance solutions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), carriers, telecom operators, content providers , businesses and institutions to support the growing needs and digital evolution of connected countries.
Laying began in 2023 with the main Tyrrhenian section from Genoa to Palermo and with branches for Marseille and Bastia (France), Golfo Aranci (Sardinia), Pomezia (Rome). From Palermo, the cable crossed the Strait of Messina to reach the Greek island of Crete, from where it will continue with further branches in the Mediterranean up to Aqaba in Jordan. The Tyrrhenian and Middle Eastern land sections are already active, while further landings in the Mediterranean and full operation from Genoa to Aqaba are expected within this year.
In Crete, BlueMed reaches Sparkle's Data Center in Chania, a cable landing station interconnected with the island's terrestrial networks and with Sparkle's MedNautilus network (with connections to mainland Greece, Turkey and Italy). Sparkle is further developing the hub to accommodate other undersea cable projects, including GreenMed, which will cross the Adriatic Sea connecting Italy to Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and Turkey, thus creating a diversified and low latency between Central Europe, the Balkans and Central and Eastern Mediterranean countries.
Italy in the European project “Atlantic-Mediterranean Data Gateway” (ATMED-DG)
Italy, then, is also interested in the European project "Atlantic-Mediterranean data gateway” (ATMED-DG). The project consists of the addition of a main cable that will run between Lisbon (Portugal) and Mazara del Vallo (Italy), connecting landing sites along the route to Zahara de los Atunes, Torreguadiaro and Barcelona (Spain) and Marseille (France).
According to the European Commission, “the project will improve intra-connectivity within and between EU Member States and will have impacts on the competitiveness and readiness of the EU digital services ecosystem. It will increase the quality of the Internet in the Mediterranean region and offer the ability to connect with Africa, Asia and America. It will form the basis for a Mediterranean Data Gateway, contributing to Europe's digital transformation to become a world-class data hub”.
This project is followed by the Call 2 ATMED NADOR-DG and ATMED EAST-DG projects, which cover different parts of the Mediterranean area and beyond. The project will implement a pair of dark optical fibers which will connect all the landing sites in southwestern Europe, through the implementation of a single cable from Lisbon, in Portugal, one of the most important Atlantic landing ports, a Mazara del Vallo, in Italy, one of the most important cable landing points in the Mediterranean. Multiple branch unit (BU) along its route will connect additional European landing sites to the main cable: Zahara de los Atunes, Torreguadiaro and Barcelona, in Spain and Marseille in France.
The ATMED-DG project has a total budget of 15.6 million euros, of which€7.8 million financed under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) digital program. This project also received support from the European Investment Bank.
The USA
For the first time since 2001, with a unanimous vote, the Federal Communications Commission ( FCC) has proposed a major overhaul of the licensing rules for undersea cables in the recently released Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”). The FCCha asked for comments on how best to improve and simplify the regulations on submarine cables, in order to facilitate their efficient deployment while ensuring the safety, resilience and protection of this critical infrastructure. In this customer alert, we offer six key points that owners, investors and operators of submarine cables should know. Any rule changes could broaden the scope of disclosure obligations and reporting for submarine cable applicants and licensees.
NATO
In February 2023, NATO established a new Subsea Critical Infrastructure Coordination Cell in Brussels to bring together stakeholders and improve coordination between the public and private sectors. In July 2023, at the Vilnius Summit, NATO allies established a Maritime Center for Undersea Critical Infrastructure Safety within the Alliance Maritime Command in Northwood, UK. In October 2023, after the first incident, NATO defense ministers approved a new Digital Ocean Vision, an initiative to improve underwater surveillance.
Late last month, at a summit of Nordic and Baltic leaders in Sweden, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk proposed a joint naval policing program between the Baltic Sea countries to protect their underwater infrastructure from external security threats. This program would run in parallel with a Baltic air police mission already in place. But these states know well that any protection measure must be closely linked to deterrence: no military patrol can cover all underwater infrastructure.
International law
According to Canergie, current provisions of international law are not formulated to adequately protect undersea data cables from sabotage or hold those responsible accountable. “This reality should lead the EU, as a body intrinsically focused on the resilience of international legal regimes, to push for updates more suited to the current geopolitical reality. In this way, European governments should ensure they better align their legal and regulatory instruments regarding the protection of submarine cables, pushing for greater standardization in this area of fragmented regulatory regimes. Lawmakers should also explore ways to increase penalties for damage to undersea cables, in part to discourage acts of sabotage in the first place.”
[This article was originally published in Italian on Digital Agenda on Jan. 2, 2025]
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