More can be done together with these partners, as well as India, the UK and the EU, to fund and back new cables in the Pacific. The Australian government also partnered in 2020 with Japan and the US to finance an undersea cable to Palau. China’s goal, it stated, is to develop ‘a maritime community with a shared future’ by building wharves, shipyards and submarine cables for Solomon Islands.Īustralia is already a part owner of the Coral Sea Cable Company, which connects Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands to Australia. In May, a draft maritime cooperation agreement between China and Solomon Islands was leaked. This includes monitoring HMN Tech proposals and tenders and seeking to encourage and facilitate alternative suppliers where possible.
When it comes to the Pacific, Australia and its partners should continue to fund and co-fund cable projects to fend off Chinese-backed alternatives. It was to be a super-fast direct fibre-optic link between the US east coast and Hong Kong. Last year a consortium of companies including Google and Facebook ditched the Hong Kong conduit of the Pacific Light Cable Network due to data integrity concerns. Recognising China’s hunger for data, in 2021 the World Bank–sponsored East Micronesia Cable tender was cancelled for fears HMN Tech would win. While US, French and Japanese corporations have dominated the subsea cable market for many years, Chinese firm HMN Tech (formerly Huawei Marine Networks) now has a global market share of about 10%. Missile attacks are possible. Landing station locations are vulnerable because data can be intercepted and ‘mirrored’ (that is, copied while the sender and receiver are none the wiser). Terrorists and criminal organisations could exploit cable vulnerabilities for different purposes.īut the bigger threat is cable interference at data points or landing stations. Sydney and Perth are the primary points where cables land in Australia. Power could be cut to those sites or explosive devices detonated. By hacking into network-management systems, attackers could control multiple cable-management systems.
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Several nations in the Indo-Pacific operate submarines capable of stealthily tampering with cables, although it’s technically challenging to do and there are easier ways to obtain data. But cable-laying companies can potentially insert backdoors or install surveillance equipment. Divers, submersibles or military grade drones could place explosives on the cables or install mines nearby, which could then be detonated remotely. It took five weeks to fix. Fishing and anchoring incidents account for approximately 70% of cable faults globally. In January, an underwater volcano shattered Tonga’s internet infrastructure-a single cable connecting the archipelago to the global internet. They are core critical infrastructure and underpin the internet, financial markets and digital economies.Īll it takes to damage a cable is a merchant ship or fishing boat dropping its anchor on a cable not far from the coast. These cables transfer more than 95% of international communications and data globally. In a recent paper, we argue that a comprehensive approach is required to address the resilience of undersea communications cables. There are more than 430 subsea cables that may be targets for anyone wishing to disrupt global connectivity. In July, the former head of Mauritius Telecom accused the country’s prime minister of having bypassed processes to grant access to a ‘technical team’ from India to install a device that would monitor internet traffic at the landing station of the South Africa Far East submarine cable at Baie Jacotet in Mauritius.Ĭloser to home, the president of the Federated States of Micronesia, David Panuelo, wrote to his fellow Pacific island leaders in May about the regional risks of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement, pointing out that the ‘bulk of Chinese research activity in FSM has followed our nation’s fibre optic cable infrastructure’.
There’s speculation that Russia could cut cables if it further escalates the war in Ukraine.
In January, the UK’s defence chief, Tony Radakin, warned that Russian submarine and underwater activities were directly threatening subsea cable systems.
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