Almost everything that crosses an ocean crosses it on a cable. Telecoms traffic, electricity between countries, the power coming ashore from offshore wind. Those cables sit on the seabed, and keeping them intact is a job that someone has to do continuously, hour by hour, in every ocean at once.
UltramapGlobal has been doing that job since 2009. From Newcastle upon Tyne, and with monitoring teams stationed around the world, we protect mission-critical subsea cables worth billions of pounds across seven continents and five customer sectors. This is a plain account of how those cables are protected, and of who is watching them.
Who monitors undersea cables
Someone has to be watching the moment a vessel starts moving towards a cable. At UltramapGlobal, a trained analyst is doing exactly that.
We run three monitoring teams, one in the UK, one in the Philippines and one in Oman. They cover every eight-hour segment of the day, right through the year, so the watch never lifts. Protection runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The monitoring team never sleeps.
Their work is to spot a developing risk and act on it. When a client cable is threatened, one of our Global Monitoring Teams intervenes. They respond to alarms as quickly as possible and keep up clear communication with vessels out at sea. Behind them sits a software support team that keeps AssetMonitor® running around the clock, so the watch itself is never interrupted.
That human layer is the point. A monitoring system can flag a vessel. It takes a person to read the situation, decide it matters and pick up the contact before anything hits the seabed.
How are subsea cables protected
Protecting a cable means keeping the wrong vessel away from it long before contact is possible. UltramapGlobal is always on, and around a client’s cable we put some or all of the following in place.
We define protection zones around the asset and set the rules for what may and may not happen inside them. We then police those zones, checking compliance and enforcing the rules. Underpinning all of it is constant vessel traffic monitoring. AssetMonitor, our specialist cable monitoring software, receives and analyses AIS data from several sources at once. AIS is the position and movement information that vessels broadcast about themselves.
Where it helps, we advise a layered defence. A common pattern is a 1,000 metre early warning perimeter with a 500 metre action required perimeter inside it. The outer ring gives the team time to assess a vessel and make contact. The inner ring marks the point at which something has to be done. That warning window is what turns a possible strike into a near-miss that never became anything.
AIS and the vessel data behind the watch
Most of what a monitoring team needs to see starts with that AIS picture. AssetMonitor takes the data in from several sources at once: shore-based receivers, satellites, guard vessels, patrol vessels and asset landing stations. Reading a single feed shows you one picture. Reading many together shows you what is really happening around a cable route.
The volume involved is considerable. AssetMonitor handles well over 100 million live AIS messages from around the world every single day. On top of the live picture sits over a decade of archived data, gathered continuously since 2009, covering cable strikes, shipping routes, fishing patterns and vessel behaviour.
That history is what lets the watch move from reacting to anticipating. With enough record of how vessels behave around a route, hazard hot-spots and recurring patterns become visible, and future problems can be predicted from the volume and type of traffic passing through. A team that knows what normal looks like on a route spots the abnormal sooner.
Detecting threats before they reach the cable
Threat detection is the difference between watching a cable and protecting one. It rests on that combination of the live AIS picture and the stored behaviour record.
At the client level, our teams replay and analyse vessel movement around a cable route to identify behaviour patterns. The aim is to encourage the good behaviour and discourage the bad, and to catch the developing risk while there is still time to act. Every event a team responds to, and the response that followed from vessels and organisations, goes into a regular Activity Report. That record is what pushes strike rates down over time, because each entry teaches the team a little more about how risk shows up on a route.
Once a cable has been struck, or a near-miss has made a strike an immediate prospect, the work becomes incident support. UltramapGlobal RED is the emergency service built for that moment, reachable at red@ultramapglobal.com. It takes remedial action as concerns rise around an actual strike or near-miss, and provides immediate protection where one is an urgent threat. Existing clients are already protected. Organisations that are not yet clients can email to find out more, and we respond within 24 to 48 hours. Work ahead of an incident, such as exploring the traffic and potential threats around an exact cable location, is ordinary UltramapGlobal monitoring and starts at info@ultramapglobal.com.
Protection across every sector that owns a cable
Cables on the seabed do very different jobs, and the risks around them differ too. UltramapGlobal monitors across five sectors, applying the same discipline to each.
In telecoms, the work protects the subsea cables carrying connectivity, data and communications. In power, it protects the electrical cables that keep supply flowing, including the interconnectors that move electricity between countries. In renewables, it covers subsea electricity cables along with the wind turbines and wave and tide generators behind them, so offshore wind cable monitoring is part of the core service. In oil and gas, protection covers subsea pipelines as well as cables, rigs and platforms. And for cable installers, it shields the work at its most exposed points, during the moments and locations where a new cable is most vulnerable.
Across all of them there is a second purpose that sits alongside asset protection. Much of this work happens in some of the world’s most volatile environments, and keeping vessels out of harm’s way safeguards the people working there too.
Choosing a subsea cable monitoring provider
If you are weighing up who should watch your cables, a few things are worth asking of any provider.
Start with how long they have been doing it, because depth of record is what tells a team what normal looks like on a given route. It is worth checking whether a person actually acts on an alert, or whether the service ends at a notification. Coverage breadth matters too, since a provider working across telecoms, power, renewables and energy has seen more kinds of risk than one that watches a single sector.
This is the ground UltramapGlobal was built on. As our co-founder Andrew Desforges puts it, we are in the business of assurance, not insurance. We are here to stop the problem, not mend the fallout. A tailored approach to protecting a cable plays to that, and it almost always brings a significant reduction in the insurance premiums the asset owner pays.
The number of cables on the seabed keeps growing, and the demands on protecting them have grown just as fast. If your cables cross the water and you want to know they are being watched, you can reach the team on +44 (0)191 233 6351 or at info@ultramapglobal.com. If a strike or near-miss has already happened, UltramapGlobal RED is the emergency line and is open to non-clients at red@ultramapglobal.com.
Frequently asked questions
Who monitors undersea cables?
Specialist providers do. UltramapGlobal runs three monitoring teams, in the UK, the Philippines and Oman, covering every eight-hour segment of the day across the whole year. Trained analysts watch the traffic around client cables 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and intervene when a cable is threatened.
How are subsea cables protected?
By keeping the wrong vessels away from them before contact is possible. UltramapGlobal defines and polices protection zones around a cable, sets and enforces the rules inside them, and monitors vessel traffic constantly using AIS data. A layered defence, such as a 1,000 metre early warning perimeter and a 500 metre action required perimeter, gives the team time to act.
What is AIS vessel monitoring?
AIS is the position and movement data that vessels broadcast about themselves. AssetMonitor receives and analyses AIS data from shore-based receivers, satellites, guard vessels, patrol vessels and asset landing stations, handling well over 100 million live AIS messages worldwide every day.
How do you detect a threat to a subsea cable?
By combining the live AIS picture with over a decade of archived vessel behaviour data. Teams replay and analyse movement around a route to spot patterns and developing risks, and act while there is still time. Where a strike or near-miss has already happened, UltramapGlobal RED provides emergency incident support.
Do you monitor offshore wind cables and subsea pipelines?
Yes. UltramapGlobal covers renewables, including subsea electricity cables, wind turbines and wave and tide generators, and oil and gas, including subsea pipelines, cables, rigs and platforms, alongside telecoms and power.
Is UltramapGlobal a UK company?
Yes. UltramapGlobal is based in Newcastle upon Tyne and has been protecting subsea cables since 2009, with monitoring teams stationed in the UK, the Philippines and Oman.
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