On 6/5/24 20:49, Ron B wrote:

From about 22:30 these guys from Telstra talk about it.
https://packetpushers.net/podcasts/heavy-networking/hn588-exploring-the-hidden-realms-of-subsea-cables-with-telstra-sponsored/

A very good listen for generic submarine cable information.

I know Andy quite well; we worked on building Unity (Chikura - Los Angeles, 2010) together when I lived in KL back in the day, and he was with Pacnet.

He has since left Telstra and joined Google around March of this year.

When I was in Oz it was confirmed that incidents within territorial waters are prosecuted using a telecommunications law that they have. I’m not aware of something similar here or how its handled.

So I've listened to what Andy was saying about this, and nowhere does he claim that law enforcement gratuitously polices, protects and prosecutes for subsea cable damage. What he said is fishing activity in those territorial waters is highly policed, because it can be an avenue for drug and human trafficking, illegal immigration, e.t.c. It is up to cable system owners (like Telstra) to keep an eye on the proximity of (fishing) vessels around their cables using AIS (Automatic Identification Systems) data, and proactively reach out to vessels that may be putting cables at risk with their activities. Besides, not only does the ship need to switch its transponder on to allow it to be tracked by AIS data, but fishing vessels of a certain size do not typically install transponders. And even if they could be seen on AIS, reaching out to some of them over radio and getting them to respond is not always successful.

As Andy added, if a vessel knowingly causes damage to a cable after they had been warned to avoid it, the cable owner can take them to court and seek damages, but the success rate for this is very very low, it generally hardly happens, if at all. But this only applies to large cargo vessels that can be easily identified and are owned by a reputable firm you can go after. Trying to prosecute a small fishing vessel is not the best use of one's time.

But what does not happen is the police actively protecting subsea cables, because that is private property and not their focus. The police may be called in to support protection of a cable or prosecution for its damage, but only after the cable owner has engaged them on a case-by-case basis, depending on the threat and/or impact. And since it is private property (whereas the police's time is compensated for by tax payers), you can imagine how often that happens.

Mark.