Milestones

JTF SMART Cable Key Milestones

  • Read the full text here.

  • Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) has been chosen by the international scientific community to take up a submarine cable initiative for undertaking long term observations of the Indian Ocean.

    Read more here.

  • The feasibility study of “Cable Antartico” was held on June 19th, 2025 in Magallanes, Chile.

    Watch the video here.

  • Chile launched a US$2.2mn tender backed by Latin American development bank CAF to produce a feasibility study to build a submarine fiber cable connecting with Antarctica.

    Read more here!

  • The JTF SMART Cables introduced the Initiative to Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and Peru 6-24 August 2024 through the UN Regional Office, ITU Regional Office, UNESCO Regional Office in Santiago de Chile and the Local UNESCO Offices in Ecuador and Lima.

    Read more here!

  • This Recommendation identifies the capabilities and features of fibre optical submarine

    telecommunication cable systems equipped with scientific monitoring sensors along the length of the

    undersea optical cables (i.e., SMART cables). It describes at a high-level characteristics and

    requirements of a SMART cable system (e.g., no interference between telecommunications and

    sensing functions, reliability of each function, operations and maintenance, general attributes of a

    power and communication interface).

    Read full article here

  • The SMART Cables network will contribute to GOOS by filling observing gaps in the deep ocean on the global scale with reliable, real-time, long-term measurements.

    Read the full article here.

  • Prima and Alcatel Submarine Networks Announce the World’s First SMART Cable Project, Tam-Tam, Connecting Vanuatu and New Caledonia, Combining Telecommunications and Scientific Observation

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  • In December 2023, Güralp, working with Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), successfully deployed the Worlds first ‘SMART Cable’ to monitor seismic activity on the floor of the Ionian Sea.

    The 21 km SMART (Science Monitoring and Reliable Telecommunications) cable, is an

    innovative system developed by Güralp in partnership with INGV for the Italian InSEA SMART Cable Wet Demonstrator project.

    Full article here

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  • Alcatel Submarine Networks, part of Nokia, leads the industry in terms of transmission capacity and installed base with more than 650,000 km of optical submarine systems deployed worldwide, enough to circumnavigate the globe 15 times. From traditional Telecom applications to Content and “Over The Top” Service Provider infrastructures, as well as to offshore Oil and Gas applications, ASN provides all elements of turnkey global undersea transmission systems, tailored to individual customer’s needs. An extensive Services portfolio completes its comprehensive offering for the submarine business, including project management, installation and commissioning, along with marine and maintenance operations performed by ASN’s wholly owned fleet of cable ships.

    Full article here.

  • SMART Cables for Observing the Global Ocean: Science and Implementation

    Howe et al. Front. Mar. Sci., 02 August 2019 Sec. Ocean Observation Volume 6 - 2019 https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00424

    The ocean is key to understanding societal threats including climate change, sea level rise, ocean warming, tsunamis, and earthquakes. Because the ocean is difficult and costly to monitor, we lack fundamental data needed to adequately model, understand, and address these threats. One solution is to integrate sensors into future undersea telecommunications cables.

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  • From space to the deep seafloor: Using SMART submarine cable systems in the ocean observing system.

    The ITU/WMO/UNESCO IOC Joint Task Force (JTF) was established in 2012 to investigate the use of submarine telecommunications cables for ocean and climate monitoring and disaster warning. These workshops reported on herein were an outgrowth of the JTF effort, the first in-depth scientific meetings to consider the topic.

    Full article here.

  • The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO/IOC), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established the Joint Task Force (JTF) on SMART cable systems in late 2012 after Works​hops in Rome (2011) and Paris (2012). Chris Barnes and David Meldrum were selected as the first Chair and Vice Chair, respectively, of JTF in December 2012.

  • Download here.