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Recently, we have reported on two incidents where undersea cables in the European region have been damaged by Chinese and Russian naval vessels suspected of sabotaging these connections.
Recently, it was reported that NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is in the process of developing a satellite system that can help track these cable damages quickly, in addition to helping countries in the region to mitigate the impact of damaged undersea cables.
This satellite system is called Project HEIST, or Hybrid Space-Submarine Architecture Ensuring Infosec of Telecommunications. With this satellite system, in addition to tracking damage, it can help in finding paths for data to flow to reduce lag problems and internet connections not being able to reach their proper destinations.
The incident of undersea cable damage between Sweden, Finland and Estonia shows how fragile the long-distance high-speed internet connections that are currently used are. Although these submarine cables are protected from the elements, because they are only located on the surface of the seabed and are not buried, they are very vulnerable to intentional damage incidents such as sabotage, or unintentional damage, such as bites from marine life and so on.
Globally, it has been reported that at least 100 incidents of cables being cut or severed. The total number of submarine cables connecting 8.2 billion people to the internet is 600 cables, so typically, 16 percent of these cables will face problems each year.
This issue is reduced by naval ships that are also always ready to repair any damage that occurs, but depending on the damage that occurs, it can take days to weeks to repair it and cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.
NATO is currently reported to be in the process of upgrading satellite connections from using high-frequency radio to laser connections that can increase the speed of connections from space to Earth to speeds of 200Gbps.