Building Future Networks

In a world increasingly shaped by geopolitical tensions, environmental challenges and rapid technological change, the resilience of global network infrastructure has never been more critical. This white paper outlines the urgent need to construct networks that connect today's populations while safeguarding against future risks.

Submarine cables and terrestrial networks are more vulnerable to disruption than ever before; compounded by persistent regulatory and supply chain challenges. The path forward lies in prioritising investments in network resilience. This entails investing in diversified routes, fostering collaboration, and developing the capacity to continuously adapt to an ever-changing operational landscape. Network operators must shift their focus from short-term gains to long-term stability, ensuring infrastructure sustains critical services even under the most unpredictable circumstances.

RETN's distinctive network-first strategy is not only ethically sound but inherently logical for all network operators seeking sustained commercial success.

This white paper issues a call to action for the industry: prioritise network resilience, foster innovation, and ensure the networks we build today can meet tomorrow's demands.

Network Vulnerability: The Scale of Geopolitical Risks and Broader Threats

Geopolitical turbulence is placing strain on communications infrastructure, as evidenced by recent disruptions in regions like the Red Sea and the Strait of Malacca caused by severed submarine cables. Reports suggest the Red Sea disruption affected 25% of data traffic between Europe and Asia, though this figure appears significantly underestimated. 

Based on our network observations at the time and customer feedback—including from several major consumer ISPs in Southeast Asia—a more plausible figure is 60–70%, whether due to network congestion or extended data transit times.

Beyond the cable cuts, design flaws and a scarcity of new cables exacerbated the problem. Connectivity between Asia, Africa and Europe currently relies heavily on two primary submarine cable systems: Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) and Southeast Asia-Middle East-West Africa 5 (SMW-5). Both lines, commissioned in 2017, traverse Egypt—a critical terrestrial transit point for submarine cables crossing the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.

Regrettably, this routing creates a single point of failure; any disruption within Egyptian territory would inflict substantial damage upon global communications networks.

Despite repeated post-pandemic pledges to plan new submarine cables, the sole new cable spanning Western Europe and Southeast Asia (SEA-ME-WE 6)—originally slated for deployment next year—now faces delays beyond 2025 due to ongoing Red Sea instability, further exacerbating network vulnerability.

Barriers to Eliminating Single Points of Failure

What, then, is impeding new cable construction? As geopolitical tensions persist, supply chain disruptions are affecting the availability and deployment of telecommunications equipment.

Firstly, only a handful of global companies possess the capability to manufacture the required high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cables and converters, resulting in limited production capacity and backlogged orders. Specialised vessels required for cable-laying are also in short supply, making cost-effective short-term charters difficult. Crucially, vessels used for laying submarine cables also undertake maintenance of existing cables; the current high incidence of cable faults further delays the urgently needed new infrastructure.

Secondly, during the pandemic, order cancellations and economic uncertainty severely disrupted semiconductor production. These critical components – chips – process data transmitted via submarine cables. The technologies used to manufacture and maintain submarine cables, including signal processing and data transmission, are equally reliant on semiconductors.

In the wake of COVID-19, we continue to grapple with the lingering effects of a global chip shortage, whose geopolitical consequences are intensifying. For instance, Chinese officials have mandated that major domestic telecommunications operators phase out foreign semiconductor products from their networks by 2027. New submarine cable projects have been delayed due to supply chain challenges. 

Climate change presents another critical issue, with rising sea levels eroding coastal infrastructure. In South America, beach erosion has become so severe that previously submerged submarine cables are now exposed, significantly increasing the risk of network outages. However, these climate risks largely constitute long-term threats. The immediate priority is to explore how to ensure digital connectivity remains intact during physical disruptions. 

Humanitarian Crises and Connectivity Needs

Over the past decade, an average of 24 million people have been displaced annually by disasters; 92% of these were weather-related, with half involving flooding. In East Africa alone, since March 2024, extreme rainfall driven by El Niño has displaced 234,000 people, including refugees from 11 nations; while the February 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria caused severe disruption to communications networks.

 Furthermore, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has displaced millions, inflicting significant damage on the region's internet infrastructure. As more people become displaced by these events, ensuring they can access the internet quickly and securely is vital, enabling them to maintain contact with loved ones and government leaders.

This underscores the need to build diverse and resilient infrastructure that maintains connectivity regardless of disruption type. After all, the question is not ‘if’ incidents will occur, but ‘when’.

Response Strategy: The Strategic Significance of Diverse Routes

When addressing cyber risks, preventative measures may not always succeed – as demonstrated by social unrest – but precisely for this reason, developing the right response plan is paramount. This necessitates mastery of response strategies.

One example of our effective response to network vulnerabilities occurred when RETN doubled transmission capacity between China and Central Asia following a submarine cable cut. Specific measures included prioritising terrestrial transmission routes and ensuring multiple submarine cable systems were deployed, rather than concentrating traffic on a few high-capacity cables.

Consider the April 2024 incident involving the SEA-ME-WE 5 submarine cable in the Strait of Malacca. As one of only two submarine cables connecting Bangladesh, this disruption caused the nation's internet capacity to plummet by a third and severed all communications between Singapore and the SEA-ME-WE 5 landing station at Kuakata. That same year, repairs to the Red Sea submarine cable were delayed for months due to regional instability.

These incidents have heightened customer demand for enhanced network resilience against future instability. Consequently, prioritising the deployment of diversified routes is paramount for all serious network operators. This entails assessing single points of failure risks in existing infrastructure and proactively investing in additional architecture. Network operators should provide at least four routes for any geographical region, ideally five or more.

Central Asia and TRANSKZ: The Tangible Value of Terrestrial Diversification

In Central Asia, landlocked nations sandwiched between Russia and China suffer from a lack of submarine fibre optic connections. Traditional links to global internet exchange hubs like Frankfurt and Hong Kong involve exceptionally long fibre distances (approximately 6,000–7,000 kilometres), resulting in high costs and frequent cable disruptions.

Consequently, we invested in building TRANSKZ—this unique land cable bridging Eurasia. It provides protective services by default (data automatically reroutes to redundant paths during failures) and employs cutting-edge equipment supporting modern transmission speeds.

Yet when the Red Sea route disruption occurred, RETN successfully maintained high-level connectivity between affected regions thanks to the TRANSKZ network. While numerous carriers were compelled to reroute Eurasian traffic via the United States, resulting in substantial latency increases, RETN's Eurasian traffic performance remained largely unaffected.

A Moment of Transformation: Addressing a Decade-Long Design Flaw

Enterprises and internet service providers should routinely review their network dependencies and collaborate closely with network suppliers to ensure multiple redundant routing options are implemented. This includes requiring suppliers to submit regular resilience reports detailing mitigation measures for potential risks.

Lessons must be drawn from a decade-long flaw in global network design – overreliance on single points of failure amplifies their impact. By creating more resilient and diverse routing options, dynamic traffic management becomes feasible. This is key to achieving universal network stability.

Collaborative Competition: Regulatory Transformation and Tech Giants' Role

Having formulated an ideal response strategy, greater focus must shift towards regulatory practices shaping digital infrastructure and market consolidation initiatives. Europe's telecommunications sector faces challenges from regulatory inconsistencies and ISP market dominance, which impact network resilience.

Simultaneously, as content giants, Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta can drive new cable system investments with a single order. For better or worse, network infrastructure development now hinges on these giants' procurement power. 

Regional Development: Connecting Neglected Areas

The final piece of this puzzle involves connecting and developing historically neglected regions. Integrating countries like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Georgia into the interconnected network not only introduces complete industries to these nations but also empowers them to establish autonomous global industrial systems and export channels.

Investing in cross-regional partnerships is key to securing alternative connectivity pathways during geopolitical crises.

Five Core Questions for Network Design

1. How does our service provider's network architecture align with our business's future growth?
2. What is the true cost of network disruptions and downtime?
3. How does network infrastructure address evolving security threats and compliance requirements?
4. How can network latency and performance optimisation be best managed?
5. Which geographic regions warrant prioritisation, and are there single points of failure?

Conclusion

As geopolitical risks intensify and humanity's dependence on connectivity deepens, building resilient, secure, and adaptable network infrastructure has never been more critical.

Constructing tomorrow's networks demands a fundamental shift in priorities – placing the needs of people and communities above short-term economic gains. By creating networks that embody resilience, reliability, and security, we can forge an ethical and strategic network ecosystem that defines tomorrow's industry leaders.