Submarine Telecommunication Desktop Studies – A Route Less Taken By Jim Case This article will attempt to walk you through the events surrounding the start, middle and end of a submarine telecommunications desktop study from the viewpoint of the data gatherer, map maker and route planner. A fact finding journey this is not, but should provide some enlightenment to those that have not done one and a bit of amusement for those who have. The question I receive most often is “Why go through the exercise at all?” The answer is simple, to learn how much you don’t know about the seabed and nearby waters between the landing points in order to reduce risks and costs related to the fact finding mission we all know as the cable route survey. Of course,
in the end it is all about protecting the cable while reducing cable length and yes, cost. You start with two points…and little else One would think that after completing a few submarine telecommunication desktop studies we would learn that they almost always start with a vague description of two remote beaches located on either side of a body of water. Someone has geographic coordinates, but choose to remain anonymous. In order to learn about these nefarious locations blood has been submitted for purity testing before used to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Once passing the test and signing we place a couple of large dots on a map of the world and say, “Draw a line
between them and see how much cable this is going to take.” The lines tend to intersect major land masses and other vulgarities the eventual cable system must avoid, but we can overlook that for now. The cost of cable determines if wallets are deep enough to proceed further. This step basically defines the project. The waiting place… Now that we have two (usually more) points and a line between them we must wait for the cable system to receive funding. This phase can take a while (i.e. years) and usually involves moving the points around a few dozen times so that the bandwidth is located appropriately. We all know that there are really only a few good places to land a cable, both from an economic and geomorphological viewpoint, but let’s not muddy the waters just yet. Data, data everywhere and not a byte to believe So we grossly know where the cable system may be installed eventually. Now we need to find all of the public, private, government and institutional data available on the planet to “engineer” a route. It is not so much engineering as it is art. That is not a bad thing. Layering and blending the data to visualize a path along the seabed is art, albeit done using sophisticated GIS systems, spatial databases and a seasoned eye.
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