Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The leading subsea cable installation and maintenance company is playing a pivotal role in restoring vital telecommunications networks in Taiwan after an offshore earthquake on Boxing Day caused the largest outage of telephone and internet services in recent memory.

Vessels are now working around the clock to repair damaged telecommunications networks following the earthquake which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and damaged the subsea fibre-optic cables which facilitate communications between the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the USA, Southeast Asia and Europe.

“The number of simultaneous cable failures was unprecedented and we made every effort to get Global Marine and our partners ships to the region to quickly start repairing the damage and restoring network facilities to South East Asia,” said Global Marine’s Asia director Ian Douglas.

The ruptures are more than 3,300m below sea level, well beyond the reach of the Remotely Operated Vehicles which are commonly used in such projects. Instead, grapnels are used to pick up cables from the seabed by being dragged from side to side across the path of the cable until it can be hooked and lifted to the surface for repair on board.

Earlier this year the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) hired Global Marine Systems and NTT World Engineering Marine – a seven-year old joint venture between NTT and Global Marine – to complete the repair of a tsunami seismic monitoring cable.

• GMS has begun subsea cable installation for Swe-comex SA de CV, an offshore engineering company, to provide vital power connectivity between two oil platforms in the Bay of Campache, Gulf of Mexico.