Cameroon's national network was largely cut off, and the national telecommunications company, after an investigation, preliminarily determined that an undersea optical cable 90 kilometers from the coast of benin had been interrupted. Repairs to undersea cables typically take 10 to 15 days, and Cameroon's national telecommunications company eventually decided to take a temporary detour of the communication lines to connect the network signals, but at slower speeds. Shortly after the 9.0 earthquake in Japan, China's two major basic operators, China telecom and China unicom, partially interrupted the international sea cables. After the emergency routing adjustment, the overseas voice service was basically unaffected, but the voice service connection rate and the network speed in North America both declined. All of Asia's major telecom operators have been affected to varying degrees, and about half of the undersea cables in the Pacific have been damaged.

Recent natural disasters have led to frequent interruption of communication signals, which puts forward an urgent demand for the repair of operators' submarine optical cables and the improvement of their disaster tolerance. Undersea optical cable has suffered great damage since this year, which has brought great difficulties to international communication. Operators have chosen other emergency communication methods to ensure basic communication, and the communication quality has been greatly reduced. Recent natural disasters have made operators pay more attention to the construction of submarine optical cables and disaster tolerance capacity, which also drives the market demand for submarine optical cables.

Cable market prospects are good

On April 12, chunghwa telecom announced it will invest at least $45 million, with China mobile, Google and Japan KDDI teamed up with the construction of a new submarine cable, the connection in chiba, Japan, Singapore, China, China (Hong Kong), the Philippines and brunei, total length of 8900 kilometers, the amount of data transmission can be extended to 15 biggest tbit/s, the project is expected to be completed in 2013. At the same time, Dhiraagu, the largest communication operator in the republic of maldives, has also announced the construction of an undersea network, centering on male, capital of maldives, connecting 8 islands in the north and south. The total length of the project is 1017 km, and the initial network bandwidth is 20Gbit/s.

Tao xinhua, a professor and director of the institute of ocean cable research at the zhongtian institute of science and technology, said that the international market demand for ocean cable reaches tens of thousands of kilometers every year, and the price of ocean cable is about 100,000 yuan (RMB, the same below)/ km, a market size of several billion yuan a year. Recent natural disasters have prompted operators to raise the quality requirements for undersea cables.

Jiangsu province post and telecommunications planning and design institute of fixed-line experts sealed double honor, said construction of submarine cable is in the world with international rules, most are in operation in alliance, for the submarine cable, but also requires a certain ability to disaster, submarine cable fault occurs, the maintenance is difficult, and the current domestic operators for export line bandwidth demand is higher and higher, increasing exports routing number, with export circuit, etc. And for operators, the need for transmission equipment, undersea repeater is also very big, but the relevant equipment manufacturers are still not many, such as huawei equipment manufacturers are also undertaking some undersea cable construction projects.

It is worth mentioning that the management mode of communication engineering in foreign countries is quite different from that in China. In general, all projects are outsourced by the enterprise, and then the enterprise will conduct the second outsourcing. Mr Tao said zhongtian is working with huawei on related projects.

Domestic cable has not been fully recognized

At present, the number of domestic enterprises able to produce submarine cable is still a small number, on the one hand, because the market demand has not yet formed a scale, on the other hand, the domestic cable is not fully recognized.

Tao xinhua told reporters that the quality of cable products produced by zhongtian technology has reached the same level with foreign countries, but now it is facing an embarrassing situation that cannot be recognized by the bidding operators. In various laboratory tests, the sea cables produced by zhongtian technology all meet the technical standards, but there is no actual deployment. However, because the tenderee often requires the manufacturer's products to have practical application cases, zhongtian technology has always been unable to win the bid. Tao admitted that he had called on domestic operators in some meetings to choose domestic undersea cable, but international lines need to follow international bidding rules, so is still not shortlisted.

In addition, in addition to the international line, another application area of the submarine cable is the seabed monitoring network, the seabed installed more sensors, it is necessary to introduce a lot of submarine cable. "Shanghai wants to build a detection network under the sea, and zhongtian technology is still not a finalist; "An undersea network will be built between fuzhou and Taiwan, and Taiwan is still not a finalist in the international tender for political reasons. Tao xinhua is worried.

The construction of submarine cable is the joint investment and construction of many international operators. If manufacturers cannot enter the international market, their cable products cannot be recognized.

It is time for the government to step up

Undersea cable market has always been a monopoly market, and many Japanese and American cable companies have a long history of development. The development of domestic cable in the international market still needs to rely on the promotion of the government and relevant institutions. The government should take effective measures to minimize security threats to maritime cables, ensure their safe operation, actively coordinate with foreign construction parties, and do a good job in the follow-up work of maritime cable protection. We will strengthen coordination and cooperation with government departments to create linkage, formulate and enact contingency plans for maritime cable protection, and establish a long-term mechanism for maritime cable protection. It is hoped that relevant government departments will further increase their support in the construction of the linkage mechanism of maritime cable protection, the construction of the routing monitoring system and the publicity and education of fishermen. We will promptly assess the security risks associated with the long-term operation of the cables, improve the seabed protection scheme, and fully promote the protection of the cables to ensure their safe operation. The protection, routing monitoring and law enforcement of submarine cables involve the cooperation of many departments. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the protection of submarine cables, it is suggested that the government take the lead in establishing the linkage mechanism of submarine cable protection, and continue to give strong support to the legislation on the protection of submarine cables, the construction of monitoring system, the cleaning up of the fishing net of submarine cables and the subsequent construction of submarine cables.

From the submarine cable line laid, mainly divided into two categories, including repeater and repeater two. There are three domestic cable enterprises that can provide mature products, but the market demand is not big. It is difficult to lay the cable line with repeater. Considering the matching problem of repeater and cable, only zhongtian technology can provide this kind of submarine cable in China. From the undersea cable market, the international length of the line can reach several thousand, or even tens of thousands of kilometers, this is the main undersea cable market. From the perspective of practical application, the undersea cable of zhongtian technology has been applied in some military networks, but there is still a lack of application cases in the communication network of operators, which has become a barrier for domestic sea cable to enter the international market.

At present, zhongtian technology is also actively striving for overseas markets and various international certifications, tao said. In terms of the Japanese earthquake brought about by the interruption of submarine cable, all need through specific maintenance company to repair, and submarine cable providers need to make sure that its offer of submarine cable can conform to the relevant indexes of maintenance company will be adopted, zhongtian technology submarine cable products have met the requirements, and cost about 120000 pounds of the cost of certification successfully certified.