Sustainability in the Submarine Cable Repair Market
- Andres Fígoli
- May 21
- 6 min read
Sustainability in the Submarine Cable Repair Market
In submarine cable damage litigation, judges frequently question the exorbitant costs of maintenance operations. Surprisingly, from 30% and up to 70% of the total average repair cost (USD 1.5-2 million) stems from fuel expenses for vessel transit from port bases to fault locations, rather than the repair itself. This raises a critical consideration: Could alternative maintenance vessels in closer proximity have reduced fuel consumption and costs?
While claimants cite pre-existing maintenance contracts, defendants (typically fishing vessel operators or insurers) often counter that costs appear inflated. Geopolitical barriers exacerbate this issue by excluding cost-effective repair providers from the market, undermining both financial efficiency and sustainability goals. This article examines sustainability from two perspectives: environmental impact and market viability amid global distortions.
In this article, we will avoid mentioning any particular nation in order to avoid drawing attention to geopolitics. Talking too much about such issues will not improve the industry in any way.
Cable Maintenance Agreements
Submarine cable repairs operate under two frameworks:
Private agreements: Direct negotiations between cable owners and contractors.
Club agreements: Collective terms negotiated by multiple cable owners.
Maintenance vessels, strategically stationed mainly in northern hemisphere ports or equatorial regions for rapid deployment, incur substantial fuel costs during transit. For example, a South Atlantic repair requiring vessel mobilization from the Caribbean may cost USD 2 million, with almost 70% allocated to fuel.
The lack of strategically located repair ports in the South is largely due to insufficient regional cable deployments, making it economically unviable to station dedicated repair vessels in these areas. Without a minimum number of cables to justify the cost, operators are left with limited and expensive maintenance options.
This dilemma is particularly evident in cases such as the new submarine cable projects in Chile. Even if a club agreement were to include them in its coverage, the need to mobilize vessels from distant locations would still result in significant costs. Finding an available construction vessel on the open market for urgent repairs is also an expensive alternative, further complicating cost management for submarine cable operators in remote regions.
Fortunately, Chile's unique seabed topography plays a crucial role in ensuring cable safety, with deep slope near the shore. Many submarine cables in the region have required minimal repairs. Their location in deep waters has provided a natural defence against external threats. Other southern hemisphere countries are not so lucky and face economically unviable solutions.
Why does this cost inefficiency persist?
Geopolitical constraints severely limit cable repair supplier selection options. In some cable laying tenders, the difference between the bids can be more than 80% of the price quoted. The submarine cable maintenance market follows the same pattern, with a clear divide between "authorized suppliers" and those who are not.
Africa exemplifies this imbalance, with only three maintenance vessels: one in South Africa, one in Cape Verde (serving West Africa), and one in Oman (East Africa). Surely open-market competition could reduce costs by reducing vessel time at sea, but at the same time subsea cable owners risk losing landing permits if they engage non-approved contractors. This creates artificial market barriers, prioritizing political compliance over operational efficiency.
Addressing Permit Delays
While permit delays in jurisdictional waters (e.g. vessels awaiting approval at "mile 201") are cited as cost drivers, these risks are often exaggerated. Operators typically forecast permit timelines accurately based on previous experiences and permanent contact with local authorities, and idle fuel consumption could be minimized through improved planning.
However, regulatory ambiguity in submarine cable governance enables stakeholders to shift blame rather than implement solutions. Usually, national governments are publicly exposed in submarine cable international forums for these permit delays, stringent customs processes and cabotage laws—forums in which of course they are not present—as if all the responsibility should be assigned to them. Indeed, it is easy to blame the absent.
Market Distortions
Ageing maintenance fleets (averaging 20 years old) lack renewal incentives compared to thriving sectors like oil/gas or power cables. National strategies to build sovereign fleets (e.g., India, France, Japan) address geopolitical concerns but fail to resolve systemic inefficiencies. And is it realistic to consider that each nation in the world should have its own cable maintenance ships? Discriminatory cabotage rules further distort competition.
End users ultimately bear the burden of these distortions through prolonged outages. The March 2024 West Africa multicable failure saw repairs delayed by two weeks, despite available contractors. Opaque explanations were given without too much detail, leaving end users in the lurch. Indeed, antitrust authorities should start scrutinizing this niche market to eliminate anti-competitive practices and to guarantee full digital sovereignty rights for its citizens.
OTT Dominance and Captive Markets
Over-the-top (OTT) providers command 90% market share on key routes through direct ownership or indefeasible right-of-use (IRU) agreements. Geopolitical restrictions compel OTTs to exclude certain cable maintenance contractors, forcing telecom operators into "captive customer" relationships with approved vendors. This imbalance stifles competition, as excluded providers cannot bid for repairs or even pressure authorized suppliers to lower prices.
Telecom companies increasingly risk marginalization, relegated to passive roles as landing station lessors. Meanwhile, OTTs exploit geopolitical tensions to expand market share in regions where traditional operators face financial or regulatory barriers.
Genuine Sustainable Practices
Current industry sustainability reports, often financed directly or indirectly by OTTs, focus narrowly on landing station diesel use or the use of revolutionary hydrogen as fuel in cable maintenance vessels, ignoring the market constraints that leads to the current high and unnecessary emissions caused by cable repair vessel transit times. This omission contradicts Paris Agreement commitments and judicial scrutiny of fuel-related costs.
The impending High Seas Treaty (BBNJ Agreement) may enforce stricter sustainability standards for cable repairs in ecologically sensitive zones. However, greenwashing persists through industry-funded studies that obscure operational realities.
In May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) 1 rendered an advisory opinion confirming that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions pollute the marine environment and that States face obligations to prevent, reduce, and control such pollution and thus protect the sea from its effects. A similar opinion is expected by 2025 from both the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
This seems to be a collision course, one which needs to be addressed without delay to avoid unpleasant surprises for the submarine cable industry on the high seas in the future.
Accountability and Solutions
End users and NGOs are waking up to connectivity rights violations and sustainability failures. Class actions targeting energy sector climate plans (e.g. November 2024 European Union complaints) could inspire similar challenges for submarine cable operators.
If governments fail to ensure transparency and sustainability in the submarine cable industry, society should and will demand change. Users are no longer just consumers of connectivity; they are now informed actors who can put pressure on companies and regulators through public denunciations and class actions against connectivity providers or countries that fail to meet environmental and fair competition standards.
The World Bank 2024 report 2 emphasizes government roles in fostering competitive infrastructure markets—a principle applicable to submarine cable governance. States must assert digital sovereignty by enabling telecom operators to freely select contractors, aligning with national sustainability strategies.
In addition, the lack of genuine sustainable practices in the cable maintenance sector due to the dilemma of fuel overconsumption based on unnecessary vessel transit time also affects other parts of our industry and other maritime industries. In essence, until the scope of work for cable repair vessels is aligned with a more sustainable agenda, we will continue to see many emissions that could have been avoided.
Conclusions
The submarine cable repair market faces dual crises: environmental unsustainability and anti-competitive distortions. Geopolitical barriers, ageing fleets, and OTT dominance create a vicious cycle where telecom operators subsidize inefficient practices while losing market relevance.
Governments must intervene through antitrust measures and treaty enforcement to ensure open competition and emission reductions. In the absence of reform, end users will increasingly challenge this stagnation through legal and advocacy channels. Sustainable market survival hinges on dismantling artificial barriers and aligning operations with global climate commitments—a task requiring urgent, coordinated action.
1. Advisory Opinion in Case No 31, ITLOS, 21 May 2024. Available at: https://www.itlos.org/fileadmin/itlos/documents/cases/31/Advisory_Opinion/C31_Adv_Op_21.05.2024_orig.pdf
2. World Bank, Green Telecommunications: Policies and Practices for More Sustainable Networks - A Practitioner’s Guide (English). Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099121824172031430
Andrés Fígoli is the author of the book “Legal and Regulatory Aspects of Telecommunication Submarine Cables” and is the director of Fígoli Consulting, where he provides legal and regulatory advice on all aspects of subsea cable work. Mr. Fígoli graduated in 2002 from the Law School of the University of the Republic (Uruguay), holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from Northwestern University, and has worked on submarine cable cases for more than 20 years in a major wholesale telecommunication company. He also served as Director and Member of the Executive Committee of the International Cable Protection Committee (2015-2023).
This article was first published in Submarine Telecoms Forum Magazine #142 – May 2025.
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