Minister seeks views on subsea cables as demand for internet connectivity soars

Minister of state Ossian Smyth has launched a public consultation on international connectivity for telecommunications that will inform Government strategy.

Irish demand for internet connectivity through subsea cables jumped by 44% in the last five years, and it is projected to “grow considerably” over the next decade, Government estimates show.

The Government said this requires investment in more subsea cables, with delivery of cables taking up to five years.

The Department of Communications has launched a public consultation on international connectivity for telecommunications to help to devise the Government’s strategy in the area.

Documents prepared for the consultation show that data centres in Ireland account for almost all internet connectivity via subsea cables, with these data centres servicing users across the world.

The dominance of demand from digital infrastructure companies in Ireland’s overall internet demand is described as “rare” in Europe.

The consultation documents said Ireland has the second highest industry data inflow to its data centres of any EU member state.

“The study finds that Ireland is unique in having main cloud data centres for the top three cloud service providers with the largest market share,” said a department document.

This highlights the importance of Ireland to the EU’s digital infrastructure ecosystem and thus the importance of subsea cable infrastructure.”

The study published by the Department of Communications said Meta, Alphabet, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft account for 79% of the total internet demand from industry in Ireland.

The department said Ireland is well served by the existing subsea cable network with 14 cables connected to Ireland: four connected to North America, nine to Britain, and one to Iceland. 

One of these has a spur that connects Ireland to mainland Europe. It said that, with Brexit, there is only that single cable linking Ireland to mainland Europe. 

It said that while there is sufficient capacity on the Ireland-Britain route, demand may outstrip capacity in the next three to five years.

It said, in addition to rising demand, a number of cables also need to be replaced in the coming years. 

Department documents said there are nine proposed, or publicly known, cable systems with connections to Ireland that are estimated to have service dates within the next four years, but predicted that not all will be delivered.

It said that two projects with landing points in Ireland are due to receive €48m in funding from an EU facility to build up cable infrastructure.

The documents appear to be silent on the security infrastructure in place in Ireland and in Irish-controlled waters, specifically the naval service and air corps, to prevent and respond to any bad actors, including hostile states such as Russia or China.

Security

Documents said the European Commission made recommendations on security and resilience in February and that a submarine cable infrastructure informal expert group was being set up to map cables, share information between member states, conduct risk assessments, and develop maintenance and repair capacity.

Launching the consultation, minister of state Ossian Smyth said Ireland “critically relies” on subsea cables for its economy and that streaming, gaming, machine learning, and big data will only increase demand on the bandwidth provided by the cables. 

He said Ireland is pursuing a strategy of being a key international connectivity hub between North America and Europe and that increased capacity and resilience is fundamental to that role.

The closing date for submissions is July 19.