Vodafone contemplating second submarine cable

The blackout in internet and other telecommunications services experienced in Malta on August 6 was not just an eye opener but proof that action was needed to have a more reliable international link. Vodafone Malta has been considering laying its second submarine cable to Sicily while upgrading its existent one before last month's incident, i-Tech has learnt.

Although the outage on August 6 was caused on land by a third party and not by natural causes on the sea bed, these submarine cables have to withstand a harsh environment 24 hours a day and accidents can happen, with serious consequences for a country that is now heavily dependent on its ICT infrastructure.

"Vodafone is currently considering various options, either laying a second submarine cable system to provide additional redundancy to the existing cable or to come to an agreement to utilise an existing cable," said Albert Zerafa, gateway and roaming manager at Vodafone Malta. "Whether we use any of the competitors' cables or lay our own still remains to be decided, but whatever we decide, we can and will be providing redundancy to other competitors' cables."

If the operator decides to have its second cable, then it will emulate Go which will commission its second one in the coming months. Melita has also embarked on such a project, which means Malta would be served by no less than four submarine cables from the three major communications companies in Malta. At the moment there are only two cables, owned by Vodafone Malta and Go.

A few weeks before August's blackout, Vodafone Malta had just completed a €1 million upgrade of its international gateway to quadruple the capacity to cater for current and future needs. The project started in March last year and took more than a year to complete.

The capacity has been quadrupled to 10 Gbps (Giga bits per second) and the local fibre links and links to international carriers, which will carry voice and internet traffic to major nodes in Europe and the US, were also upgraded. The company is now able to offer multiple leased circuits, very high volumes of internet bandwidth and various other voice, managed and co-location services.

"This upgrade is in line with the forecast rate of growth of bandwidth and considers the fact that Malta is aiming to be the centre of excellence in ICT and finance, attracting investors whose business depends on modern high speed and reliable internet connectivity," added Mr Zerafa.

Vodafone's submarine cable became operational in July 2004, at a time when Malta was going through significant changes in the ICT scene. It is 260 kilometres long and cost €10 million to set up.

Mr Falzon recalled that "Prior to 2004, when Vodafone Malta built its very own international gateway, we had a situation in Malta where telephone calls to other countries were very expensive; in fact it was cheaper to call from abroad to Malta than to call from Malta. Internet access was limited and the public had do with low download limits and very slow internet speeds.

"Malta was connected to the outside world via one submarine cable which had been laid quite some years ago and which has a very limited capacity. These deficiencies did not auger well for new investments in Malta. Companies involved in writing software for international companies, online betting firms and call centres, to name just a few, could not and would not risk bringing their business to Malta under the conditions mentioned above.

"At the time Vodafone took the decision to invest and build its own international gateway. It had to face very difficult obstacles ranging from lack of experience on the island, to ongoing political issues abroad. This is because building an international gateway is quite a vast and complex project."

The cable carries three main types of traffic: internet, voice and data traffic leaving or coming into Malta. In addition it also provides state-ofthe-art protection for service providers against fraudulent attacks.

Some of this traffic is generated and terminated on the Vodafone mobile network, or by virtue of the interconnects Vodafone has with other local operators, this traffic would be brought from abroad and terminated on other local competitors' networks, either mobile or the normal house phone. The same applies for internet traffic.

The gateway and roaming manager at Vodafone Malta insists that their cable system was designed right from the start with in-built redundancy.

"All the electronic equipment being used is duplicated, both in Malta and Sicily and multiple pairs of fibres are used within the cable itself. Thus, the system is designed with a very high level of availability. In case of some equipment failure, traffic is diverted to alternative paths within milliseconds. In most cases, the changeover is so fast, customers and systems would not even be aware of a changeover from a working path to an alternative path."

Maltese internet users did not benefit much from redundancy on August 6, and this has sparked a controversy over whether the local competing communications companies can cooperate to support each other in case of an emergency.

In the wake of this outcry the Malta Communications Authority last week issued draft regulations intended to ensure that operators providing public electronic communications networks, which include an international connection, have in place the required measures to ensure continuity of supply of such services. The MCA also wants to have a bigger role to play in case of serious disruption of service on the international links.

These regulations will be implemented by the government after consultation with interested parties.

i-tech@timesofmalta.com