Services

 

Desktop Study – This tool is used as a starting point for most of our clients to systematically assess their current submarine network situation. Typically includes the following:

• Cable Condition – Better identify the state of your submerged networks current  condition including:
  • Mechanical condition of the cable on the shore landings
  • Optical Characteristics – including the change (delta) since newly installed
    • Analyzing OTDR, Power Meter and PMD test data
    • Do you have any optical events that point to potential failure within the submarine cable? What water depth do they correspond?
• Identify the current threats to your submerged plant
  • Local fishing activity
  • Construction in the area – Planned  and currently underway.
  • Vessel anchorage – While we understand that  the crossings are marked “no anchorage”, the unfortunate fact is boats still anchor within your charted cable area. Our team has over 100 years experience installing subsea cables. Each time we have removed submarine cables from the right-of-way as a pre-requisite to a new cable installation permit; we have recovered numerous obstructions including: anchors, chain, fishing nets, fishing pots, bottom trawl dragger doors not limited to an entire bottom trawl, tow-line cables with surge gear and metal objects so corroded we could only imagine what and how they became wrapped around the submarine cable we were recovering.
• Charted location – Is your submarine cable properly identified on the published marine charts? We compare the as-built to the charted location. Older installations are many times incorrect by 30 meters or more. We can locate, chart and submit your cable to State DNR and Federal records to reflect the actual position of your cable.
• Proper signage on each landfall? Simple signage updates re-acquaint the local public on the landfall that the cable remains active and in-use. We include a website address reporting form that integrates into our alert system and database for each landfall location.
• Emergency Plan – do you have an emergency plan for an outage?
  • Agreement with another carrier for emergency communications
    • Dark Fiber
    • Lit Fiber
    • Back Up Generator
    • If you are an Island PUD most likely you do not have any power backup  from other PUDs. Do you have your FTTH customers backhaul traffic ready to be re-routed to another carrier? We have installed tails into OSP cases to have at-the-ready for pulling into the meet-me-here vault and splicing into the back-up cable from another carrier.
  • Short term plan
  • Long Term
  • Proper spare cable and subsea splice cases for potential submarine cable repair
• local contractor to effect a submarine splice.

SubseaFiberWatch System Installation – Upon completion of the desktop study we will prepare and present a solution tailored for your particular subsea crossing.

A typical solution includes:

SSFW-01 Fiber Optic Monitor System – Our SubSeaFiberWatch system is a persistently connected and OTDR system, That not only monitors but is constantly analyzing data from continually monitor one fiber or many fibers simultaneously within your subsea cable. We continually analyze any change in the optical characteristics of your cable. In real time we will analyze any changes and provide instant notification via SMS and email.

In some cases certain characteristics inherent in the submarine cable construction, lend themselves to pre-failure notification. (We are referring to the monitored fiber optic cables’ internal position inside of the cable) Possibly translating into notification of anchor/ fishing gear entanglement before the cable is severed.  If you think about a vessel that has deployed an anchor or fishing gear; the damage to the submarine cable comes after the realization that the anchor/gear is stuck or fouled.  Some of the mechanical properties are able to analyze the

 

SubSea Cable Route Monitoring:

• Live monitoring of transponder vessels traffic over submarine cable area.

Local CCTV Monitoring:

We are pleased to install a local cctv system on each cable landing to monitor the cable land-fall. On shorter crossings the camera 📷 can see

• The Dynamic Desktop Study analyzes marine activities and takes snapshots of the registered vessels in the damaged cable area.

Drone Dispatch:

• The Drone lives in an actuated box on the cable landfall. It can be dispatched to fly at 300 feet over the cable route on a predefined flight plan.

Cable Risk Assessment:

• Our system uses a continuous laser waveform to analyze the cable in real-time, and identifies a fault-point.

Fault Location Calculation:

• Our custom software identifies the fault along the cable route, including the marine survey water depth and bathymetry chart of the cable fault region.