Full repairs to three submarine internet cables damaged in the Red Sea in February are being held up by disputes over who controls access to infrastructure in Yemeni waters.
The Yemeni Internationally recognized government (IRG) has granted permits for the repair of two out of three cables, but refused the third because of a dispute with one of the cable’s consortium members, according to documents seen by Bloomberg.
Three out of more than a dozen cables that run through the Red Sea, a critical route for connecting Europe’s internet infrastructure to Asia’s, were knocked offline by the Houthi-sunk Rubymar vessel in late February.
Although the telecommunications data that passes along the damaged cables was re-routed, the incident highlighted the vulnerability of critical subsea infrastructure and the challenges of making repairs in a conflict zone.
The dispute over the third cable derives from the split political control of TeleYemen, the country’s sole telecommunications provider, a reflection of the country’s broader geopolitical divisions.
The company has two branches, one in Aden under control of the IRG, and the other in Sanaa under the control of the Houthi militia group.
The Yemeni IRG refused to cooperate with the Houthi-linked part of TeleYemen associated with the AAE-1 cable consortium and sought to appoint a representative from the Aden branch, according to the documents.
But the consortium didn’t approve the alternative representative and Yemen’s IRG declined to grant a permit, according to the documents.
The Aden branch of TeleYemen, affiliated with the Yemeni IRG, wrote a letter to Yemen’s Telecommunications Ministry demanding that E-Marine provide a £10 million ($12.5 million) bank guarantee to ensure it would not carry out any repairs on the AAE-1 cable when the company was fixing the other two cables until the dispute was resolved. The ministry initially approved the condition, according to the documents, but Yemen’s cabinet decided it wasn’t necessary, a senior government official told Bloomberg.
The cables will be lifted to the surface and fresh cable will be spliced in to replace the damaged sections.
The repair crew will also assess the Rubymar, the Houthi-sunk ship whose anchor most likely severed the cables in February.
Seacom estimates that the ship is currently about 1 kilometer away from its cable, Padayachee said, and seems to be stable.
“But we don’t want to do a repair and then have this vessel falling into the new cables,” he said. “In all likelihood it will have to be moved.”
The three damaged cables carry about 25% of traffic in the region, according to estimates from Hong Kong-based internet provider HGC Global Communications, which uses the cables.