Undersea Cable System Evolving Markets

摘要

For the last 20 years, undersea fiber optic networks have been deployed in the world's oceans and seas to provide telecommunications between countries. The high reliability, low cost, high capacity fiber optic technology available in the mature undersea telecommunications equipment marketplace follows a long tradition of analog and digital transmission cables. In contrast to its terrestrial counterpart, each component and subsystem of an undersea telecommunications cable is extremely inaccessible and expensive to replace. Designs requiring frequent repairs for failed, inexpensive components are not acceptable in this environment. The technologies that are used to connect continents using high bandwidth communications and that provide remote regions with the voice and data access have for some time been put to other beneficial uses. For more than a decade, submarine fiber optic systems have been used to increase the efficiency and profits of offshore oil and gas platform operators. Though profit is not the goal of scientific and homeland security applications, submarine cables are also providing new functionality to collect vast amounts of data to explain fundamental geophysical and biological processes in our oceans and to provide unprecedented functionality in harbor security operations. In the sections that follow, the marketplace for submarine telecommunications is described for the offshore oil/gas industry and the scientific marketplace. For the oil/gas industry, both the commercial business case and sample solution descriptions are surveyed as the multi-billion dollar offshore platform evolves toward the digital oilfield of the future. Ocean bottom sensors, scientific multi-use platforms and harbor protection systems are highlighted to describe some of the notable scientific applications.