French telecoms giant Orange has officially christened the latest €50 million (£43 million) vessel in its fleet of undersea internet cable repair ships as the Sophie Germain, named for the 18th century mathematician, physicist, and philosopher.
With the launch debut of Sophie Germain, which is operated through subsidiary Orange Marine, the telecoms group bolsters its prominent position in the unique industry of repairing broken undersea internet cables.
Sophie Germain replaces the 40-year-old, 108-metre CS Raymond Croze.
In April, Orange Marine rolled out a new submarine cable linking Tunisia and France, co-financed by the European Commission as part of the Mechanism for Interconnection in Europe (MIE) programme. It is due to be completed by the end of 2025.
According to its LinkedIn page, Orange Marine operates a fleet of six cable ships and one survey ship in partnership with its Italian sister company Elettra, representing almost 15% of the global submarine installation and maintenance market.
At the end of 2022, Orange Marine's ships had installed over 278,000 kilometres of fibre-optic submarine cables and had carried out over 800 repairs, some at depths of over 6,000 meters.
Sophie Germain is fitted out with one hospital, three lounges, a mess room and a gym.
Bloomberg also reports that a baker makes fresh croissants and pains-au-chocolat twice a week.
The cable ship capacity crunch
A report by DCD last December warned of a “cable ship capacity crunch”.
“Today there are more than 400 or so subsea cables in operation, with dozens more due to enter service over the next few years,” said DCD. “These cables are the lifeblood of the Internet; with the majority of the world’s data flowing through fiber sitting on or under the ocean floor.”
However, the global supply of ships that can actually lay and maintain these cables is only around five dozen, and they are quickly becoming unfit for purpose.
“Most of those ships are long in the tooth; following a glut of new ships deployed around the millennium at the height of the dot com boom, new ships have been few and far between since,” read the report.
Much of the industry’s issues are due to the expense, and lack of significant revenues, involved in laying submarine cables.
However, it is an expense worth taking on, according to Orange.
“Faced with competition and the financial power of Big Tech, retaining ownership of our infrastructures is key,” Orange chief executive officer Christel Heydemann said during Sophie Germain’s christening.
Geopolitical cable tensions
Submarine cables are also a source of geopolitical tension.
“Major geopolitical developments, specifically Russia's conflict with Ukraine, China's preparations for potential forceful unification with Taiwan, and the deterioration of US-China relations, are likely to fuel physical attacks and intelligence collection efforts against submarine cables,” Insikt Group warned in June.
“The rapid expansion of the submarine cable network in the 21st century, driven by data demands, cloud computing, and the needs of hyperscalers like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, must contend with converging geopolitical, physical, and cyber threats.”
The pan-continental cable map – Source: https://www.submarinecablemap.com/