Ownership of subsea cablesAbout 470 distinct entities own subsea cable systems, most of which are telecommunications.
The three Chinese carriers — China Telcom, China Mobile and China Unicom — have co-ownerships in 16, 13 and 13 cable systems, respectively.
However, the US based hyperscalers are also large investors, with Google co-owning about 34 cable systems, while Meta co-owns 19.
Subsea cable repair ships can cost $80-130 million with specialised crew required for repair using sophisticated tools.
France has a repair index of 0.82 due to the ownership of her firms in about 8 cable repair ships (ISCPC, 2026).
The ongoing Middle East conflict is affecting internet traffic in the region, the vast bulk of which travels via submarine cables. The major cables that transit the Strait of Hormuz include: 2Africa, AAE-1 (Asia Africa Europe-1), FALCON, Gulf Bridge International (GBI) Cable System, and Tata-TGN Gulf. The recently constructed 2Africa cable is 45,000 route kilometres long with a potential capacity of about 180 Terabits per sec (Tbps). Similarly, the Red Sea, through which as many as 10 cables cross, is another potential choke point. These cables are critical in connecting countries across South and Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East to Europe. Any damage to these cables can potentially disrupt financial and banking services, internet connectivity, and cloud services, in these countries.
Ownership of subsea cables
About 470 distinct entities own subsea cable systems, most of which are telecommunications. Telecom carriers such as Orange, British Telecom, Vodafone and Telstra have co-ownership in 15-20 cable systems. Tata Communications, has co-owernship across 18 cable systems. The three Chinese carriers — China Telcom, China Mobile and China Unicom — have co-ownerships in 16, 13 and 13 cable systems, respectively. However, the US based hyperscalers are also large investors, with Google co-owning about 34 cable systems, while Meta co-owns 19. It is in the interest of each country, to have ownership in these cable systems through their local firms for stable operations. Australia’s Vocus communications fully owns Australia-Singapore Cable, while a consortium, including the Australian telco Telstra, owns the Australia-Japan Cable.
Repair capacity
Average number of cable faults is about 150-200 per year for the past three years. The average time to repair is about 55 days. However, it took 177 days to repair the cut in Asia-Africa-Europe-1 cable between Vietnam and Singapore last year. Repairing subsea cables is onerous and expensive. Subsea cable repair ships can cost $80-130 million with specialised crew required for repair using sophisticated tools. Currently, there are 63 major subsea cable ships, including the largest fleet owned by SubCom, a US registered one, with a cable capacity of 33,000 metric tonnes.
The maintenance and repair of subsea cables is primarily operated as a shared service wherein the resources within a defined operational area are shared between cable owners using zone agreements. For example, both Australia and Indian operators are part of the Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean Cable Maintenance Agreement zone. While the zone agreements work in peace time conditions, it is during geopolitical conflict that vulnerabilities of countries in accessing repair fleets assumes importance. Sovereignty and control of repair vessels would be in the interest of countries to respond to cable faults in their proximity quickly in a time of crisis.
Geopolitical orientation
Foreign policy preferences shape international relations, yet they cannot be directly observed and must instead be inferred from behaviour. Votes in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) have become the standard data source for constructing measures of state preferences, known as Ideal Point Scores (I-scores). The Voeten-Bailey-Strezhnev framework remains the standard approach to estimate dynamic ideal points from UN voting. Countries with similar I-scores are geopolitically aligned while countries with very different scores are not aligned. Ideal points obtained using a 2025 UN dataset shows that the US and Syria have extreme I-scores, of +2.50 and -2.17 respectively. On the other hand, Australia, China and India have I-scores of +1.34, -0.80, and -0.25 respectively.
How do they align?
We calculate an ownership index from 0 to 1 using both cable capacity and the geopolitical alignment between the cable owner’s home country and the landing country. If there are multiple owners of the cable such as in a consortium, we take the estimated proportionate share into the ownership index calculation. A high index score indicates that the landing country has higher control over the ownership of the cable. In contrast to Australia, China, India and the US that have index scores of 0.81, 0.80, 0.72 and 0.87, respectively, Iran and Syria, which have 6 and 4 cables landing respectively, have ownership indices of 0.28 and 0.34, indicating their relative vulnerability.
Similarly, we extend this analysis to repair and restoration capabilities. We compute the repair index by considering both repair vessel capacity and the similarity of geopolitical interests between the vessel-owning country and the country needing repairs, as measured by the I-score. Australia, China, India, and the US have repair indices of 0.84, 0.67, 0.75, and 0.68, respectively. France has a repair index of 0.82 due to the ownership of her firms in about 8 cable repair ships (ISCPC, 2026). The relatively low score for the US reflects the structure of the index rather than a shortfall in capacity: because the US sits at the extreme end of the I-score distribution (+2.50), a larger share of the rest of the world’s repair fleet — including vessels owned by China and Russia — is discounted heavily in the calculation, even though the US would be unlikely to call on this capacity in practice.
In this article we have formulated a method to compute the resiliency of countries with respect to ownership and repair access to subsea cables by incorporating respective geopolitical alignment. The analysis suggests that countries should advocate for greater cable ownership by their telecom carriers, internet service providers and hyperscalers — directly or through consortiums — while also taking proactive measures to improve sovereign or allied access to repair vessels, whether through private investment, cable spares for emergencies, or expanded zone-based maintenance agreements.
Roy, Sridhar and Parthasarathy are with IIIT-Bangalore, and Bashfield is with La Trobe University, Australia. Research for this article is funded by the ‘Australia-India Cyber and Critical Technology Partnership’ Grant-4
Published on July 8, 2026
