Every day, the things we read on the Internet, the messages and data we exchange, travel to the depths of the oceans, inside great and very long cables that connect the continents. The most powerful submarine telecommunication cables are 380 and are responsible for the intercontinental transmission of 95 percent of the data. They are perhaps the most important infrastructure humanity has ever disposed of in its history: not only our favorite GIFs depend on the transmission of those data, but the economies, bureaucratic and health systems of entire countries. Governments do not miss the strategic importance of submarine cables and for this reason they observe with great attention the companies that build and manage them, such as the Chinese Huawei, already accused by the United States of spying on behalf of China by taking advantage of its contracts to realize in around the world 5G, the next generation cellular network.
Huawei is best known for its smartphones but is very active in the entire telecommunications sector, producing and setting up systems for both mobile and cable networks. The company is totally private, but according to the United States it maintains close relations with the Chinese government, and could therefore be forced to accept requests to introduce systems for cyber espionage into the networks it sells abroad.
Despite having blocked its operations in the United States, the US government has not produced convincing evidence against Huawei, which is now trying to retaliate in court to obtain an unblocking of the 5G contracts. In Europe, Huawei has made numerous agreements to build the new cellular networks, but several European governments are receiving heavy pressure from the United States to review contracts and rely on other companies. Now something similar could happen with submarine cables, as a lengthy article in the Wall Street Journal explains.
The laying and management of submarine cables is organized by Huawei through its subsidiary called Huawei Marine Networks. Similar to what happened with other divisions of the Chinese company, Huawei Marine has grown very rapidly in recent years, becoming one of the most important companies in the sector globally. Last September, for example, it completed the laying of a cable on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to put Africa and South America in direct communication, through a link between Cameroon and Brazil. The cable is 6,000 kilometers long and will allow for the acceleration of data transmission in parts of the world that are still developing.
Overall, Huawei Marine is engaged in at least 90 projects involving the construction or upgrade of submarine telecommunications cables around the world. It manages to make numerous contracts thanks to its policies to reduce profit margins, which allow it to offer products to operators at very advantageous prices, compared to companies that have historically already established themselves in the sector and which are American, European and Japanese. For example, Huawei Marine is working on the construction of more sections of a new cable – between Europe, Asia and Africa – which will be 12 thousand kilometers long.
The new connection is part of the plans for the so-called “New Silk Road”, the initiative launched by the Chinese government to improve its connections to the countries of Eurasia and parts of Africa. It is an extremely ambitious plan that involves large investments in the construction of ports, roads, railways and telecommunications networks in the participating countries. China has already started building a number of infrastructures, offering financing to interested countries in exchange for privileged access to its goods and other assets. The initiative is of particular concern to the United States, which fear that it will lose its influence vis-à-vis Western European countries.
Concerns are also linked to the fact that the Chinese government exercises strict control over the population, through sophisticated cyber surveillance systems and limiting access to free information. According to intelligence experts, China would like to reproduce this approach also abroad, taking advantage of its presence in the construction activities of new telecommunications systems, such as submarine cables.
Huawei Marine denies having a direct role in the “New Silk Road”, but is still winning numerous contracts in the sector for the laying of new cables. The company has existed since 2008 and is the result of a joint venture with Global Marine Systems, a British company that owns a fleet of ships equipped for laying submarine cables. Huawei owns 51 percent of Huawei Marine, while the remaining 49 percent is in the hands of HC2 Holdings, a US company that controls Global Marine Systems. HC2 is considering the sale of its shares, which could be acquired by Huawei, obtaining full control of the joint venture and excluding the United Kingdom (which would still have to approve the transaction for antitrust reasons).
For more than 10 years Huawei has been working on submarine cables, and in some cases it has made extensions and updates of connections even for systems that directly concern the United States. Things got complicated in 2012 when the US Congress called Huawei a “national security threat”. At the time, negotiations were underway to build a $ 250 million submarine link between London and New York. It turned out that the operator involved in the operation was persuaded to abandon Huawei and to choose other companies with technologies made in the United States. The impression was that the United States had used the “threat” issue as an excuse to favor US companies at the expense of their Chinese competitor.
The Congressional statement and subsequent allegations made against Huawei have meant that since 2013 the company has no longer worked on cables that directly connect the United States. However, Huawei Marine has expanded significantly in the rest of the world and is the fourth largest company in the sector, after the US SubCom, the Finnish Alcatel Submarine Networks and the Japanese NEC. By 2020 it will complete the construction of 28 submarine cables alone, a quarter of all those under construction in the five-year period 2015-2020. Some of these connect several allies of the United States, such as France, the United Kingdom and Canada.
In most cases, submarine cables are controlled by large telephone operators, who organize themselves into consortia to jointly support the costs of their laying and maintenance over time. Many operators are directly controlled by governments, or in any case have historically close relationships with them, given that all kinds of data pass over their networks, including those to manage service networks and infrastructures. In recent times, large Internet companies such as Facebook and Google have started making their own cables to enhance the services they offer to users. Traffic is routed on submarine cables according to the needs of the moment, so you can rarely have complete control over the medium through which the information will pass.
The construction of 5G is closely linked to the expansion of the submarine cable network to connect the continents. Cell phone towers are naturally wired to the rest of the Internet, and for the transmission of information over large distances, with oceans in between, satellites are not enough. High-capacity, high-speed networks will require increased bandwidth of submarine cables and the construction of new links. Despite the US accusations, Huawei will not be excluded in the rest of the world from this great work of updating the networks. According to analysts, governments will simply ask for greater guarantees on cyber security, without preventing a private company from continuing to collaborate with the hundreds of telephone operators and partners it already has around the world.
