Aging Subsea Cable Fleet Needs a $3B Upgrade – Report
Aging Subsea Cable Fleet Needs a $3B Upgrade – Report
By Robert Clark, Light Reading
July 2, 2025
The world’s aging cable repair fleet threatens to undermine the coming boom in subsea cable construction, a new study has warned.
A report commissioned by the SubOptic Association estimates that the submarine capacity industry will need to spend $3 billion to upgrade its repair and maintenance fleet over the next 15 years.
The volume of deployed cable kilometers is forecast to grow 48% over the period, while annual repairs are likely to increase by 36%.
According to the study, 1.6 million kilometers in new cable systems will be put into the water between now and 2040, roughly twice as much as the volume being taken out of service.
At the same time, 47% of vessels in the global cable fleet will be nearing the end of their 40-year service lifespans by 2040.
This disconnect increases the potential for cable faults, in particular in areas such as the southwest and northwest Pacific that require a disproportionate number of repairs, caution the authors, consultancy firms TeleGeography and Infra-Analytics.
These factors “raise concerns about the adequacy of existing maintenance vessel capacity to maintain service quality.”
Sporadic investment
“While existing models have largely served the sector well, the aging fleet, repair backlogs in high-usage regions, and need for investment in new vessels present formidable challenges,” the report said.
It is not the first attempt to alert industry and government of how the humble repair ship could become a chokepoint for the global digital economy.
The report contrasts the massive long-term investments in cable systems with the uneven spending on cable ships.
“Sporadic investment in new vessels and the prevailing trend to introduce used or second-hand vessels to the maintenance fleet is a product of high capital costs, market uncertainty and maintenance agreement economics,” it says.
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