Network operator ponders building a new submarine cable – on land

African carrier Seacom is investigating the feasibility of building a submarine cable that would run across the heart of Africa, on land. 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 …

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

This sounds like a job for a cargo Zeppelin

[Alan Brown]

Not really

The problem with big gasbags is that they're extremely suceptible to weather - microbursts driving them into the ground are bad, but updrafts taking them high is even more dangerous, particularly to crew. (Lack of oxygen is a big issue at 20k feet) and to structural integrity (bursting risk, and venting gas to avoid that happening can lead to them crashing into the ground shortly afterwards)

The actual cargo capacity of a zeppelin isn't very high, putting them around the chaotic air of a mountain range is a spectacularly bad idea and while it might be a passable idea for wide open spaces a Caterpilar D10 equipped with mole plow is a more practical option. You can't just drape a cable like this across the scenery and expect it not to be chewed on by wildlife or damaged by rockfalls, never mind the humans along the way

Terrestrial cable laying tech is pretty mature. The issue is powering terminals in isolated areas and that's where the idea of using line powered submarine cable repeaters comes in. The 100% optical ones seem like science fiction when you look at them.

As far as optical fibre cables being less susceptible to copper thieves goes - experience demonstrates that thieves will dig it up/cut it anyway and only abandon the attempts when they don't find copper. The average criminal isn't particularly bright...

[Claptrap314]

Proving, yet again, that the troll icon is not optional...

[Neil Barnes]

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!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the ships used to build submarine cables pack in hundreds of kilometers of cabling

Johnny Depp in a pirate outfit will do :)

[Richard 12]

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.

[IanRS]

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.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Political instability nixes it

Not to mention that aluminium has it's own scrap value - less than copper, but definitely not zero.

[Doctor Syntax]

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.

[MyffyW]

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.

[Annihilator]

Re: Political instability nixes it

That's the exact scenario I was remembering. It'll get nicked just in case it's copper.

[druck]

Re: Political instability nixes it

They set fire to the cable to burn off the insulation leaving the coper, but only to find a puddle of melted glass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Political instability nixes it

I admittedly don't know much about the feasibility, but why wouldn't microwave repeaters work? Is it way more expensive? Seems like you could control small ouposts more easily than long cables.

[Annihilator]

Re: Political instability nixes it

Power is the reason. They wanted to use submarine cable tech, because the optical repeaters are powered by the cable itself.

Microwave repeaters need height, and power, or they're stuffed. And they've only got about 40-50 miles range, so you'd need about 100 of them stretched across Africa. A cable largely disappears over time and isn't visible.

[Eric 9001]

Re: Political instability nixes it

Microwave line-of-site transmitters are commonly in use in the deserts of Africa - as fibre laid in shifting sand promptly breaks.

Repeater stations can only transmit so far and need power at every repeater location, which would be significantly more expensive than a single fibre with optically, or aluminum wire powered repeaters - as power only needs to be supplied at both ends of such cable.

[Anonymous Coward]

"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 Fitzcarraldo reference. They don't make Claudias movies like that anymore. :)

[Alex 72]

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.

[MyffyW]

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.

[cyberdemon]

Re: "parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter."

A line of electricity pylons would also be sensible.. The earth wire at the top usually contains fibre optics, and the 400kV wires below it protect themselves from thieves very effectively

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: "parts of the route are only accessible by helicopter."

Building hugely expensive infrastructure in Africa is a China speciality. But, then they will own it. And therefore, all of the countries that use it.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Guido Esperanto]

It reminds me how effective those "no tools left in this van overnight" stickers are in reducing van break ins.

[David Hicklin]

> "no tools left in this van overnight"

I read one the other day that said " no children left in this van overnight"

[batt-geek]

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

[Doctor Syntax]

And don't rule out private enterprise either.

[Danny 14]

or just threaten to chop it for protection money.

[Eric 9001]

Most submarine cables already lead directly to places that add optical splices and sell access to people that do far worse things than playful cleverness and also even crackers.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

[Alex 72]

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.

[I could be a dog really]

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.

[Anonymous Coward]

was it meta or maybe google who piloted airship type ap's / repeaters ? might be viable (i really never looked into what <whoever> did)

alternatively his muskiness could probably do something via starlink...

[Alan Brown]

Project Loon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC

[Big_Boomer]

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.

[Alex 72]

Re: Why?

The guardian said "submarine cable costs about $40,000 a mile" the potential savings by shortening the route are large, also the plan is not to do this instead of coastal routes but alongside for resilience. There are significant barriers to sustainable security along the route and sustainable maintenance access. But "it's less bonkers than it sounds".

[Alan Brown]

Re: Why?

Submarine cable may cost $40k/mile but terrestrial cables cost a lot more than that

The big advantages are lowered latency and redundancy, but with the upcoming launch of Starlink's large V3 birds a bunch of these niche cabling projects are facing serious competition

[Alex 72]

Re: Why?

lol starlink, most pros want the bandwidth to be the same regardless of cloud cover or if Elongated ego agrees with what you want to use it for

[awomanmanhasaname]

Liquid Telecom has a cable network across Southern/Eastern Africa from coast to coast covering Tanzania, Congo, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Angola.

East West is done (no issue overbuilding though I question the financial wisdom : see Quintillion and several British altnets)

https://www.liquiddataport.com/terrestrial/

What's really missing is a North South cable and the best option is from Algeria to Niger. Since the distance that's missing from Fibre coverage from Arlit to In Guezzam by road is just short of 250km as seen in this coverage map

https://www.liquiddataport.com/map/

This document is clearer

https://liquid.tech/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/LIT-Fibre-Map-Sept23-Global.pdf

Covered in this article

https://liquid.tech/about-us/news/liquid-dataport-launches-its-shortest-fibre-route/

If you notice, they've done this twice

[Dwarf]

Whats new

Haven't we been running cables across land for decades - just in ductwork that is under ground and just under the surface with a trench cutter (ditch witch or similar)

I can't see how leaving cables on the surface would be good, far too many hazards to the cables due to them being caught up in machinery, bent in funny angles / places, etc.

The only reason they are left as-is under sea is because there is no other sensible way to do it and the risk from true accidenal damage from boats and subs is fairly minor.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Whats new

I can't see how leaving cables on the surface would be good, far too many hazards to the cables due to them being caught up in machinery, bent in funny angles / places, etc.

I doubt they will be on the surface, and would have to be trenched and ducted.

The wording of the article is a bit confusing as a terrestrial cable obviously isn't going to be a submarine cable. All it seems to be doing is borrowing from submarine cable concepts and using line power. That reduces the need (and cost) of finding and powering regen sites. Those still kind of exist, except they're spliced into the cable and then fed from the power core. It'll be interesting to see if they get funding and the final route selection, which is kind of a linked exercise. So which countries & cities end up chipping into the costs. Then those locations can have PoP's that host the SLT & PFE kit, and muxes to drop capacity along the route. So kind of a dry version of classical systems like SE-ME-WE with 'landing stations' along the route. It'll probably also be possible to increase the fibre count as the 'dry torpedos' doing the regen won't have to deal with all the stresses of a deep, wet system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dig very deep and let the ultimate mole machine loose across the continent. It can drag the cable along with it then. Just hope it doesn't pop up or out of somewhere anyone can see it because you didn't get your depth right.

I know Openreach have used moles for short distances, I do wonder how long one could go on for without getting stuck.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Just needs Lesley Judd to, erm, manipulate it...

[Eric 9001]

Moles won't make it very far - as those can only trench through soil, as far as the pneumatic air supply and piping can handle and will stop on encountering a rock layer.

A small boring machine will make it further, but those need to be babysit, with a conveyor belt taking away evacuated material and will get stuck on encountering rock that is too hard, or to soft, or the wrong type of soil or sand.

[rg287]

As awomanmanhasaname menions, Liquid have an east-west connector already, albeit a bit south of where Seacom are looking. So that seems to be an issue of routing, connectivity and capacity than engineering. Can an ISP in Kenya peer/send traffic to an ISP on the west coast using that link, or will the route go via Europe or South Africa due to routing? Likewise, will an ISP in Mozambique be able to route traffic up to Kenya, across Africa and out to a west coast point, or will it - again - route via the coast?

That said, some submarine cable tech could be of use. Following the Congo, a river-bed plough that buries cable (not just dropping it on the surface of the riverbed) could get you from the west coast - Port Banana - all the way past Kinshasha to Kisangani. It;s a wiggly route, but we're not doing high speed trading over it, and it passes a lot of cities - which tend to cluster around major rivers!

From Kisangani, you've then got the mountainy bit to get across the African Rift Valley, through Rwanda/Uganda/Burundi into Tanzania/Kenya and down to the coast.

The Congo is... a large river. A cable buried deep in the bed would not be readily accessible to vandals, albeit the same might apply to repair teams! It does dispense with having to carve a line across central Africa. Of course, buidling a railway from Kinshasa to Kampala and/or Mwansa (linking across the top of the N-S lines at Ilebo and Kindu), would do wonders for mobility across that region, and you can lay in some fibre while you're at it alongside the railway's comms hardware.

[awomanmanhasaname]

They are settlement free peers.

So it depends on who's downstream.

I'm sure SEACOM doesn't intend to pay Liquid for IPT.

I'm guessing though that if SEACOM builds, they'll have the leverage to force Liquid to exchange pairs on routes.

That's how it's done in the submarine Fiber world

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting

So far, it has been wireless technology that has won the day in sub Saharan Africa (mobile networks, Starlink) but the idea seems intriguing.

Judging by the name, I take it the interviewed gentleman is an African himself and intimately familiar with the challenges facing the idea, but also with the possible advantages.

Once thing is guaranteed: if this ever comes to fruition it won't be designed or built by any Western company. It will be a Sino-African or Hindo-African partnership, with perhaps the Russians playing a minor role.

[IGotOut]

Ready that entire article....

...just seemed to have as much relevance to reality as a nuclear powered concept car.

Heat is an issue, but look they put it in a lake, so is feasible. Because a lake is thermally identical to solid rock or sand near the equator.

Politics could be an issue. No shit. Your talking about active conflict zones and / or areas riddled with massive levels of corruption.

Transport of cables could be an issue. Well I've an atomic powered truck you could invest in. I've got mock-ups in MS paint and everything. I'm going to use AI to build it.

Of course,vwe could always use the Boring Company to build a hyperloop, that's should of already built one from New York to LA by now.

[goblinski]

...But Breytenbach points to the existence of a submarine cable in Lake Tanganyika as evidence submarine systems can be adapted to different environments...

The second-deepest lake in the world (500m average depth with 1400m+ at its deepest) is the absolute, slam dunk best comparison he could pull for passing a cable in a swamp. It is absolutely clear that said lake is closer to terra firma conditions than to submarine conditions. Good call !!!

Where do I invest ??? Pretty please? I'm asking for a friend.

Also, is it April 1st already ? I know we switched off DST yesterday in my neck of the woods, did I set the clock too far back ?

[Gmanton]

Good luck.

Geopolitics in Africa. Tribal conflicts. Poverty. Warlords.

Nope. Not going to happen when any dude with two goats and an AK can sabotage it.

[Diogenes8080]

A railway and a telegraph cable? I suppose they could christen it the Rhodes Connection (Cecil, not Bernie).

Might want some territorial concessions in order to ensure the integrity of the line.