Yemen’s Political Disputes Delay Full Repairs Of 3 Submarine Internet Cables In The Red Sea

In February, complete repairs to three submarine internet cables impaired in the Red Sea were held up by disputes regarding who controls the access to infrastructure in Yemen’s waters.

Yemen’s government has granted permission for the repair of two of three cables but reportedly refused the third due to a dispute with one of the cable’s consortium members.

Repairs to the EIG and Seacom cables have received approvals, but Yemen’s internationally recognized government did not give permission to the consortium that operates AAE-1, which includes the telecommunications firm TeleYemen, per documents seen by Bloomberg.

Three of the more than a dozen cables running through the Red Sea, an integral route for linking Europe’s internet infrastructure with Asia’s, were knocked offline in late February by the Houthi-sunk Rubymar.

Even though telecommunications data that transpires along the impaired cables was re-routed, the incident stressed the vulnerability of crucial subsea infrastructure and the issues associated with repairs in such a conflict zone.

The dispute regarding the third cable is a result of the split political control of TeleYemen, the nation’s only telecommunications service provider, which echoes the country’s geopolitical divisions.

The firm has two branches, one in Aden under the control of the Yemeni government and the other in Sanaa under the control of the Houthis.

Yemen’s government declined cooperation with the Houthi-linked portion of TeleYemen associated with the AAE-1 cable consortium.

It aspired to appoint a representative from the Aden branch, per the documents.

However, the consortium did not agree with the alternative representative, and the Yemeni government declined to grant the permit.

E-Marine, a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Telecommunications Group Co. PJSC, is currently contracted to do the repairs.

The Aden branch of TeleYemen, affiliated with Yemen’s government, wrote a letter to the Telecommunications Ministry of Yemen demanding that E-Marine give a £10 million bank guarantee to ensure that it would not perform repairs on the AAE-1 cable while the firm was working on the other two cables until the dispute was resolved.

According to the documents, the ministry initially approved the condition, but the Yemeni cabinet decided it wasn’t essential, a senior government official informed Bloomberg.

E-Marine didn’t respond immediately to a request for comments.

The Houthi telecommunications ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

It is not clear if the Houthis, the military group that controls much of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, including the port of Hodeida, will permit E-Marine to repair the two cables.

The group has been continuously attacking vessels in the area with missiles and drones for several months now and has formerly said only it can permit repairs.

According to Seacom’s Prenesh Padayachee, the repair vessels will take nearly a week to reach the cables and roughly two days to fix each.

These cables are expected to be lifted to the surface, and a new cable will replace the shattered sections.

The repair crew members will assess Rubymar, the Houthi-sunk vessel whose anchor possibly severed the cables in February.

Seacom estimates that the vessel is approximately one kilometre from the cable Padayachee mentioned and appears stable.

But he explained that they don’t want to do a repair and then have the vessel fall into new cables. In all probability, it will have to be moved.

The three impaired cables reportedly carry nearly 25% of the entire traffic in the region, per estimates gathered from HGC Global Communications, a Hong Kong-based internet service provider that uses cables.

Reference: Bloomberg

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