2007 Oral and Poster Papers

Since the development of optical transmission via optical fibres has been improved enormously, the capacity, transported on submarine cables has increased rapidly. But because the Operation & Maintenance costs of older submarine cable systems, carrying lower capacity compared to modern systems are almost the same, all international carriers, involved in submarine cables are showing a high interest in retiring of older submarine cable systems in order to be released from the costs and the duties of the Consortium contract. Scope of this presentation is to provide a guideline for considering the key aspects of submarine cable retirement.

Recent software advances have improved the efficiency and accuracy of cable route planning and have provided better quality assurance and control during installation – important improvements for both the owner and installer. Geographic information system (GIS) technology has proven to be a reliable means of integrating various data forms into a single platform. Recent developments in 3D GIS provide the capability to deal with very large data sets and convey information more effectively than traditional, 2D static maps. In cable installations, real-time slack management systems have been expanded for tension control of lay operations, typical of power cables and plow operations.

The Universal Joint Consortium (UJC) is a longstanding cross industry body which exists specifically to ensure that proper and consistent joints can be created by all industry members for any cable types which have gone through the certification process. This UJC currently consisting of the major cable installation and maintenance providers has done a great deal of good over the years, ensuring a certain amount of fairness and quality in this core part of our industry. In recent years both the reporting and the UJC group of companies have not kept up with the rapid changes in the telecommunications industry. The envisioned presentation will give a non-partisan status of the UJC, will propose some concrete suggestions for change and will provide examples of how an improved UJC might restore some significant cooperation and accountability to our industry.

The recovery for repair of deepwater lightweight cables remains a time consuming and hence costly activity. Potential solutions to this problem have been developed over the last one hundred and thirty years; however there is no solution in widespread use today other than the conventional, time consuming, use of three separate grapnels drives. This paper reviews the previous solutions, and examines why none has proven sufficiently successful to achieve widespread use today. Recent work undertaken by the authors on cable gripping is described leading to a novel solution for a new generation of deepwater cut and hold grapnels.

Since their introduction to the submarine cable industry in the mid-1990’s, Electronic-Burial Assessment Surveys (E-BAS) have become an accepted survey technique for providing burial predictions, and determining the cable armouring necessary to ensure safety from external threats to cables. Since the year 2000, the arrival of a modern fleet of powerful installation ships and high penetration ploughs has led to a quantum improvement in installation performance, raising the question “Is Bas Still Necessary”? This paper looks at a risk-assessment approach to determine E-BAS data validity in the route engineering process. It concludes that, as a result of the improved installation tools, the value added by E-BAS surveys in their current form is severely limited. A need to re-focus the method of performing E-BAS is necessary if it is to remain useful in future submarine cable installation projects.