Extended Operational and Trade Vocabulary

Submarine Cable Laying, Repair Vessels and Operators glossary

Terminology of the subsea telecommunications cable industry: armored cable constructions such as A-DGS, power-feeding architectures, cable suppliers and plant operators like Alcatel Submarine Networks, and the named trans-ocean systems, landing stations and cable-laying and repair vessels that install and maintain global fiber-pair infrastructure.

249 defined terms.

A

A-DGS: Armored Double Galvanized Steel submarine cable construction, used in shallow water zones below 1,500 m where additional mechanical protection is required against trawling and anchoring.
Alcatel Lucent Submarine Networks: Former name of ASN until the 2016 Nokia acquisition rebranding, still appearing on many legacy system contracts including TAT-14 and SEA-ME-WE 4.
Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN): French submarine cable manufacturer and installer headquartered in Nozay, supplying systems including 2Africa, MAREA, and Dunant.
AMP-1: Alcatel-developed power feeding architecture using single-ended PFE for short repeatered systems under 2,000 km.
Anjana: Microsoft-sponsored trans-Atlantic submarine cable system planned between Virginia Beach and Sopelana, Spain.
Apollo Submarine Cable System: 13,000 km trans-Atlantic cable owned by Vodafone since 2012, originally built by Alcatel in 2003 with landings at Bude, Lannion, Manasquan and Shirley.
Armored Cable: Submarine cable with one or more layers of galvanized steel wire armor providing mechanical protection in shallow or trawled waters.
ARTERIA: Italian Sparkle subsidiary operating the BlueMed and other Mediterranean systems requiring frequent repair vessel callouts from Catania depot.
Asia Pacific Gateway (APG): 10,400 km consortium cable activated 2016 linking Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, built by NEC and HMN Technologies.
Asia Submarine Cable Express (ASE): NTT-led 7,800 km system from Japan to Singapore via the Philippines, completed 2012 by NEC.
ASN Calais plant: Primary ASN manufacturing facility on the Boulevard des Allies, producing repeaters, BUs and cable since 1891, formerly the SAT cable works.
ASN Greenwich: Repeater and BU manufacturing site at Christchurch Way, Greenwich, London, the historic Standard Telephones and Cables plant.

B

Bay of Biscay: Gulf of the North Atlantic along the western coast of France and northern Spain.
Bifrost: 20,000 km Meta and Keppel system from Singapore via Indonesia to the US West Coast, the first cable to traverse the Java Sea, built by NEC with completion in 2025.
Bottom tension: Force in the cable at the seabed touchdown point during lay operations, controlled via ship speed, cable engine pay-out and payout angle.
Bourbon Subsea Services: French subsea contractor whose vessel pool occasionally serves cable burial campaigns through plough deployment.
Branching Unit (BU): Underwater equipment in a submarine cable system that splits or joins fibers and powers between branches.
Brest: French Atlantic naval port and arsenal developed under Richelieu and Colbert in the seventeenth century.
Bude: UK landing site in Cornwall hosting numerous trans-Atlantic cables including FLAG Atlantic-1, Apollo North and Grace Hopper.
Burial Protection Index (BPI): Index used by submarine cable operators to define burial depth requirements based on water depth and seabed activity.
Bury assessment survey: Pre-lay survey defining target burial depth by route segment, typically 0.6 to 3 m depending on seabed hazard classification per ICPC Recommendation 6.

C

Cable depot: Onshore storage facility holding spare cable, repeaters, BUs and jointing materials for rapid loadout by a CRV, key examples being Calais, Portland, Subic Bay and Cape Town.
Cable Engine: Linear or wheel-based machine on a cableship that grips the cable and provides tension control during lay and recovery.
Cable Innovator: Global Marine cable repair and installation vessel with a long service record on submarine telecommunications and power cables.
Cable Laying Vessel (CLV): Specialized ship configured for installation and repair of submarine power and telecommunications cables.
Cable Protection Committee: See International Cable Protection Committee.
Cable Repair Vessel (CRV): Cable ship sized and equipped for fault repair rather than long installations, typically 8,000 dwt or less with multiple tank capacity around 2,000 t.
Cable Tank: Below-deck cylindrical storage tank for coiling submarine cable.
Calais: ASN headquarters facility and cable depot at Port de Calais, with deep-water loadout berth used by Ile de Brehat and Ile de Sein.
Cape Town: South African south coast port supplied by Astron Energy (formerly Caltex) and Engen, serving rounding traffic between Europe and Asia.
Carousel: Rotating storage table on cable/umbilical lay vessels.
Catamaran lay barge: Twin-hull shallow water cable installation platform used in shore-end and intertidal segments where deep draft vessels cannot operate.
China Telecom Marine: Chinese state-owned cable ship operator running CS Fu Hai, CS Fu Tai, CS Bin Hai and CS Fu An, headquartered in Shanghai.
CIGRE B1: International electrotechnical study committee for insulated cables, including a submarine cable working group whose Technical Brochures govern power cable test regimes.
CLV-ER: A CLV additionally classed Equipped for Repair, retaining repeater handling and jointing capability after a primary lay role.
Coffin joint: Older field joint enclosure design using a steel coffin filled with epoxy, largely superseded by modern injection-molded universal joints.
Constellation: Group of satellites operated together to provide continuous or near-continuous coverage.
Coral Sea Cable System (CS2): 4,700 km Vocus-built system from Sydney to Honiara and Port Moresby completed 2019 by ASN.
Curie: Historical unit of radioactivity, 3.7 by ten to the tenth becquerel, replaced by becquerel in IMDG.
Cyclades: Central Aegean Greek archipelago served by Blue Star Ferries, Hellenic Seaways, and Seajets from Piraeus and Rafina.

D

DA (Double Armor): Cable construction with two layers of galvanized steel armor wires, used in heavy fishing or sand wave zones at depths up to about 1,500 m.
Decisive: SubCom cable ship, ex-USNS Adventurous T-AGOS-13, converted to a CRV operating from Portland UK and Curacao depots.
DEME Offshore: Offshore renewables subsidiary of DEME operating WTIVs including Innovation, Apollo, Sea Installer, Sea Challenger, and Orion.
Depot agreement: ICPC-style standard contract under which a cable owner pays a depot operator a monthly fee to store and maintain spares.
Dolphin coupling: Quick-connect mechanical termination between a cable end and recovery wire used to recover repeater segments to deck.
Dunant: Google-sponsored trans-Atlantic submarine cable system, approximately 6,400 km, employing space-division multiplexing.
Duplex repair: Repair method involving cutting out a damaged section and inserting a new cable bight with two final joints, the standard procedure where a single in-line joint is impractical.
Dynamic Positioning Class 2 (DP2): Redundancy standard for cable-lay and pipelay vessels enabling station-keeping without a single point of failure.

E

EAC-C2C: 36,800 km intra-Asia consortium cable operated by Telstra since 2014, originally built by NEC and Asia Netcom.
EASSy: 10,000 km Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System completed 2010 by ASN, landing in nine countries from Sudan to South Africa.
Echo: 17,000 km Google and Facebook cable from California to Singapore via Guam, Indonesia and Palau, built by NEC and SubCom and ready for service in 2024.
Echo-sounder lay: Continuous depth verification during cable lay using hull-mounted multibeam to confirm route bathymetry against the as-laid model.
EllaLink: 6,200 km submarine cable connecting Sines, Portugal, with Fortaleza, Brazil, in service since 2021.
Equiano: Google-sponsored submarine cable from Lisbon to Cape Town with branches in West Africa, ready for service in 2022.
ER (Equipped for Repair): Class notation indicating a cable ship carries repeater jointing chambers, splice tanks and qualified jointers for in-line repair work.
EuroAfrica: Cable system brand owned by EuroAfrica Interconnector, distinct from the regional industry working group of the same informal name.
External aggression: ICPC term covering all third-party causes of cable damage including fishing, anchoring and dredging, accounting for roughly 70 percent of recorded faults.

F

FASTER: Trans-Pacific submarine cable system completed in 2016, linking Japan to the US West Coast, with Google among consortium members.
Fault localization: Process of identifying cable break position using OTDR, COTDR and electrode-to-sea voltage measurements, typically achieving 100 m accuracy on repeatered systems.
Field joint: Submarine cable joint made offshore aboard the lay vessel after cable repair or installation.
Final Splice: Operation in which the last segment of a repaired or newly installed submarine cable is jointed and laid down to the seabed.
FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA): 28,000 km Reliance Globalcom system in service since 1997, built by KDD-SCS and AT and T-SSI and one of the first true global ring cables.
Fortaleza: Brazilian landing hub city for EllaLink, AMX-1, Brusa, Junior and Monet, hosting multiple cable landing stations operated by Eletronet, Equinix and others.
French cable corridor: Channel and Bay of Biscay routing zone heavily mapped by Orange Marine and protected under French Decree 2012-489.
Fu Hai: Cable maintenance vessel of SBSS operating in the China Sea Cable Maintenance Agreement area.

G

Global Cloud Xchange: Reliance subsidiary operating the former FLAG cable systems, with cable ships managed via S B Submarine Systems.
Global Marine Group: UK headquartered subsea cable installation and maintenance company, operator of cableships including Cable Innovator and Sovereign.
Grace Hopper: Google-sponsored trans-Atlantic submarine cable system linking the US, UK, and Spain, ready for service in 2022.
Grapnel: Small anchor with four or more flukes.
Grapnel Run: Cable ship maneuver in which a grapnel is dragged across the seabed to engage a target cable.
Ground bed: Subsea sea electrode used by a PFE to inject power feed current into seawater, located several hundred meters from the cable landing station.
Guantanamo: Caribbean cable transit zone hosting AMX-1, GTMO-PR and the SubCom-built MAYA-1 with frequent fault activity from fishing.

H

Hawaiki: 15,000 km cable from Sydney to Oregon via American Samoa, built by TE SubCom and ready for service 2018, owned by BW Digital since 2022.
HBU (High-power Branching Unit): SubCom branching unit variant supporting higher line current for long-haul SDM systems.
Heading control mode: DP sub-mode keeping vessel head into prevailing seas while maintaining cable engine alignment during lay operations.
Hexatronic: Swedish fiber and cable group acquiring Rochester Cable in 2018 and supplying unrepeatered submarine cable systems and shore-end armored cable.
HMN Technologies: Chinese submarine cable system supplier, formerly Huawei Marine Networks.
Hold Harmless Agreement: contractual indemnity often reviewed for the contractual liability extension of P&I.
Holdback tension: Tension applied by the cable engine to limit slack as cable runs off the stern, critical during deep water lay.
Holiday detector: Low- or high-voltage instrument used to find coating discontinuities by electrical contact through the film to the substrate.
Honiara: Solomon Islands landing point for Coral Sea Cable System with shallow water repair access via the CS Reliance.
Honolulu: Hawaii landing hub for SEA-US, JUPITER, HIC, AAG and Hawaiki, with Sand Island BMH at the core.

I

ICPC: See International Cable Protection Committee.
Ile d'Aix: ASN cable ship, smaller depot-based unit, used for harbor and shallow water tasks.
Ile de Batz: ASN cable ship, 100 m LOA, built 1983, deployed on shore-end and CRV work.
Ile de Brehat: ASN cable ship, 140 m LOA, built 2002 at Hellesoy, operated by ASN Marine from Calais with 7,000 t cable capacity.
Ile de Re: ASN cable ship, 124 m LOA, built 1983 and operating as a CRV in the Atlantic.
Ile de Sein: ASN cable ship, 140 m LOA, built 2001 at Hellesoy, sister to Ile de Brehat and similarly based in Calais.
In-line cable plough: Towed seabed plough that simultaneously trenches and lays cable, with SMD HD3 and ASN's plough family delivering up to 3 m burial.
Indonesian archipelagic waters: UNCLOS Part IV designated routes constraining cable installation through Bifrost, SEA-ME-WE 6 and other trans-Indonesia systems.
International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC): Industry body for cable protection.
International Submarine Engineering (ISE): Canadian builder of ROVs and AUVs used for cable and pipeline surveys.
Inverter: Power electronic converter producing AC from DC, used in HVAC and shaft generator hybrids.

J

Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA): 9,500 km RTI consortium cable in service 2020, built by NEC linking Maroochydore, Piti and Minamiboso.
Jointing chamber: Climate-controlled clean room on a cable ship where field joints are assembled, typically Class 100,000 with humidity below 60 percent.
JUPITER: Trans-Pacific submarine cable system connecting Japan, the Philippines, and California, ready for service in 2020.
Just-in-time loadout: Operating mode at Calais and Subic depots where a CRV mobilizes within 24 hours of fault notification.

K

KDDI Cable Infinity: KDDI flagship cable ship, 142 m LOA, built 2019 at Mitsubishi Shimonoseki, replacing the older CS KDD Ocean Link on heavy lay duties.
KDDI Cable Ships: Japanese cable ship pool including KDDI Cable Infinity, KDDI Ocean Link and KDDI Pacific Link, operated via KDDI Cable Marine Network.
KDDI Ocean Link: Cableship operated by KDDI Cable Ship, based in Yokohama, providing maintenance under YOCCMA.
KDDI Pacific Link: Cableship operating under the YOCCMA arrangement.
Kennedy Space Center: SubCom Newington plant testing facility near Cape Canaveral used for repeater environmental qualification.
KIS-ORCA: Kingfisher Information Service offshore renewables and cable awareness chart distributed to fishermen across the southern North Sea.
KIWI cable: Telecom New Zealand domestic system completed 1996, with TNZ retaining ownership rights through Spark and Chorus.
Kobe: Japanese cable manufacturing center hosting Sumitomo Electric and NEC OCC cable plants.

L

Lannion: Orange Marine R and D and cable plant in Brittany producing repeaters and BUs for ASN systems.
Lay Tension: Force applied along a cable or pipeline during installation to control catenary and touchdown stresses.
Lay-and-bury (LAB): Single-pass operation where cable is laid and simultaneously buried using an in-line plough.
LCC: Amphibious command ship hull symbol.
Light Weight Protected (LWP): LW cable with an extra polyethylene jacket for limited mechanical protection in transition zones.
Light-weight (LW): Unarmored deep water submarine cable construction with high tensile steel wires under a polyethylene sheath, used at depths typically above 1,500 m.
Lodbrog: Orange Marine cable ship, 91 m LOA, built 1976 in Le Havre and one of the longest-serving operational cable ships, retired in 2024.
Loop test: PFE test injecting current through a cable loop to verify continuity and insulation resistance before commissioning.

M

MAREA: 6,600 km transatlantic submarine cable from Virginia Beach to Bilbao, owned by Microsoft, Meta, and Telxius, in service since 2018.
Marine Maintenance Agreement (MMA): Multi-year ICPC-style contract under which a cable ship operator guarantees response time for repairs across a defined geographic zone.
Maroochydore: Australian landing site in Queensland for Coral Sea Cable System, JGA and TGA, served by Vocus.
Maxim Gorky: Former Soviet cable ship operated by Sevmorput, retired in the 1990s.
MBR cable house: Marine Beach Manhole architecture used at the surf zone transition.
Mediterranean Cable Maintenance Agreement (MECMA): Regional MMA covering the Mediterranean and Black Sea with vessels including Sovereign and Raymond Croze previously contracted.
Mertcable: See SubCom legacy product, repeater housing line.
Mertec: Brazilian-based cable ship operator, vessel CS Brusa originally chartered.
Microbend: Local fiber distortion from manufacturing or jointing defects, manifesting as elevated COTDR loss.
Mid-stage pumping: Optical amplification within a repeater splitting EDFA gain across stages to support C plus L band systems.
Monet: 10,400 km Google, Algar, Angola Cables and Antel system from Boca Raton to Fortaleza and Santos, built by ASN and ready for service 2017.

N

NEC Corporation: Japanese submarine cable systems supplier with manufacturing at OCC Kitakyushu.
NEC OCC: NEC subsidiary OCC Corporation, manufacturer of submarine optical cable at the Kitakyushu plant and one of three global cable factories along with ASN Calais and SubCom Newington.
NetUpdater: SubCom cable ship, 113 m LOA, ex-USNS Zeus support cable layer, operating from Newington and Baltimore.
Newington: SubCom headquarters and cable plant at Newington, New Hampshire, producing repeaters, BUs and cable since 1955.
NEXANS: French cable manufacturer producing HVDC and HVAC submarine power cables at its Halden facility in Norway.
Nexans Aurora: Cable-lay vessel of Nexans commissioned in 2021, with 10,000 t turntable capacity.
Nexans Skagerrak: Older Nexans cable installation vessel based in Norway.
NIST traceable: Calibration chain for cable test equipment, required by major operators including SubCom and ASN test labs.
NKT: Danish manufacturer of HVDC and HVAC submarine power cables, with factories in Karlskrona, Sweden, and Cologne, Germany.
NKT Victoria: Cable installation vessel of NKT, commissioned in 2017, with 9,000 t turntable capacity.
Nokia Bell Labs: Research arm whose Murray Hill team developed coherent transmission used in current submarine line terminals, distinct from ASN now under French state ownership.

O

OALC: Optical Aerial Lightweight Cable, not submarine, mentioned here only to distinguish from OALC-4 and OALC-7 submarine families produced by ASN.
OALC-4: ASN single-armor submarine cable design for fiber counts up to 16 pairs.
OALC-7: ASN deepwater LW cable design supporting up to 24 fiber pairs for SDM systems including Dunant and 2Africa.
OCC: Offshore Construction Contractor.
Ocean Specialists Inc (OSI): Florida-based marine survey and consulting firm performing route surveys for many submarine cable systems.
Omega: Subcom field joint kit reference name used in repair manuals.
OPGW: Optical Ground Wire, used on overhead transmission lines and listed here to distinguish from submarine fiber.
Orange Marine: French submarine cable installation and maintenance operator, subsidiary of Orange.
OTDR: Optical Time Domain Reflectometer used for fiber fault localization in dark fiber pairs.
Owner's representative: Person designated by the owner to liaise with PSC officers and the master.

P

Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1): Trans-Pacific submarine cable between Japan and the United States operated by NTT.
Pacific Guardian: SubCom cable ship, 95 m LOA, ex-Sea Diver, converted to a CRV based in Subic Bay.
Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN): Trans-Pacific cable between Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, and California, with operational segments after 2020 regulatory changes.
PEACE Cable: HMN-built 21,500 km cable from Pakistan via Egypt to France and Singapore, in service from 2022.
Perigee: Point in the Moon's orbit nearest Earth.
PFE: Power Feeding Equipment supplying constant current (typically 1.0 to 1.6 A) to subsea repeaters along the cable's metallic conductor.
Pierre de Fermat: Orange Marine cable ship, 100 m LOA, built 2014 at Vard Brevik, jointly owned with ASN Marine and used for installation and repair.
Plough: Towed seabed implement creating a trench for simultaneous cable burial during lay.
Plumbline: SubCom-developed bathymetric correction software for as-laid surveys.
Plymouth: Devon port and home of Princess Yachts.
Polyethylene jacket: Outer insulation of modern submarine cables, typically MDPE or HDPE, replacing earlier jute and tar coverings.
Pontianak: West Kalimantan landing point for Bifrost and SEA-ME-WE 6.
Portland UK: Cable depot at the former Royal Navy base, used by SubCom-contracted CS Sovereign and CS Decisive for North Atlantic MMA.
Prysmian Cable Enterprise: 133 m cable installation vessel built 1976 (rebuilt 2005), 7,000 t carousel.
Prysmian Group: Italian cable manufacturer producing HVDC, HVAC, and umbilical systems, with installation vessels including Leonardo da Vinci and Prysmian Cable Enterprise.
Prysmian Leonardo da Vinci: 171 m DP3 cable laying vessel built 2021 at VARD Brattvaag, with 17,000 t cable carousel for HVDC export cable.

Q

Quad cable: Power cable construction with four conductors used in some niche subsea applications, distinct from fiber telecom cable.
Quasi-static cable: Dynamic riser cable category for floating offshore wind, listed for completeness as a separate Prysmian and Nexans product line.

R

RA (Rock Armor): Heaviest submarine cable armor class with two layers of large diameter steel wires and additional outer serving, used in rocky surf zones and below 50 m where dragging anchors threaten cable…
Raymond Croze: Orange Marine cable ship, 94 m LOA, built 1983 at La Ciotat, retired in 2022.
Recorder: SubCom cable ship CS Recorder, 84 m LOA, originally Norwegian Mercandian Carrier converted to a CRV.
Reliance: SubCom cable ship CS Reliance, 113 m LOA, built 2001 at IHC Beaver, formerly Tyco Reliance, based in Suva and Apra for Pacific maintenance.
Rene Descartes: Orange Marine cable ship, 145 m LOA, built 2002 at Hellesoy, flagship CLV-ER with 8,000 t cable capacity.
Repeater: Self-contained submerged optical amplifier unit installed along long-haul cable systems.
Repeater jointing: Specialized joint family connecting cable armor to the repeater pressure housing, qualified to 35 MPa.
Resolute: High Arctic Canadian community on Cornwallis Island used as a logistics hub for Northwest Passage voyages.
Restricted Area: ENC object RESARE describing an area with navigational restrictions.
Riserless lay: Cable lay technique without a stern chute, used by some power cable vessels with overboarding wheel.
Rochester Cable: Hexatronic subsidiary in Rochester, New York producing unrepeatered submarine cable.
Route Engineering Survey (RES): Detailed pre-installation marine survey with multibeam, sub-bottom profiler and side scan, the basis for the as-planned route.
RPL: Route Position List, the cumulative kilometer reference defining cable positions, repeater locations and slack along the system.

S

SA (Single Armor): Submarine cable construction with one layer of galvanized steel wire armor, used at depths up to about 1,500 m with low to moderate fishing intensity.
SAEx (South Atlantic Express): Planned 25,000 km cable connecting South Africa to South America and the US, contract held by SubCom.
Sand Island BMH: Cable landing station hub on Oahu hosting JUPITER, FASTER, SEA-US, AAG and Hawaiki.
SBSS: S B Submarine Systems, UK cable ship operator, sister of Global Marine, with vessel Cable Retriever.
Sea Plough VIII: SMD-built in-line cable plough operated by Global Marine for burial down to 3 m.
Sea Spider: ASN-developed remotely operated trenching vehicle.
SEA-ME-WE 4: 18,800 km cable from France to Singapore commissioned in 2005.
SEA-ME-WE 5: 20,000 km cable from France to Singapore commissioned in 2016.
SEA-ME-WE 6: Planned 19,200 km submarine cable from Singapore to Marseille announced in 2022.
SeaMeWe: Brand abbreviation for South East Asia, Middle East and Western Europe consortium cables.
Sergeant: ASN cable ship name not in current service.
Sevmorput: Russian Atomflot-operated cable layer base, with limited submarine telecom work today.
Shore-end: Heavily armored cable section at the landing, typically the RA grade, joined to the deepwater LW or SA via an in-line joint at the toe of the beach.
Sines: Portuguese cable landing hub on the Atlantic, hosting EllaLink, Tannat and 2Africa.
SLTE: Submarine Line Terminating Equipment at the landing station, supplied by Ciena, Infinera, Nokia or NEC.
SmartLight: ASN coherent SLTE family.
SMD: Soil Machine Dynamics, UK supplier of cable burial ROVs and ploughs used by Global Marine, IT International Telecom and Subsea 7.
SMW6: Common abbreviation for SEA-ME-WE 6.
Sophie Germain: Orange Marine cable ship, 100 m LOA, built 2023 at Colombo Dockyard for Orange Marine, named for Sophie Germain.
Sovereign: Global Marine cable ship, 130 m LOA, built 1991 as Toisa Sovereign, contracted to Atlantic Cable Maintenance Agreement from Portland UK.
Splice case: Pressure-tight housing protecting the fusion-spliced fibers in a field joint, requiring full vacuum testing before relaunch.
SSP: Salvage Service Plan submitted by salvor to authorities under OPA 90 and similar regimes.
Stable point: DP reference position for cable lay, typically held within 0.5 m tolerance during repeater overboarding.
Steel tape armor: Older armor construction used on shallow water and shore-end cables before galvanized wire became standard.
Stinger: Curved overboard ramp on S-lay pipelay vessels.
Subaru: KDDI cable ship Subaru, 76 m LOA, built 1991 at Mitsubishi for KDDI, retired around 2020.
SubCom: US submarine cable supplier headquartered in Eatontown, New Jersey, formerly TE SubCom, owned by Cerberus Capital Management since 2018, with Newington plant and cable ships Decisive, Reliance…
SubCom Bold: SubCom cable ship, 110 m LOA, ex-Tyco Bold.
SubCom Dependable: SubCom cable ship, 140 m LOA, built 2000 as Tyco Dependable, with 6,500 t cable capacity.
SubCom Durable: SubCom cable ship, 140 m LOA, built 2002 as Tyco Durable, paired with Dependable for Atlantic maintenance.
SubCom Responder: SubCom cable ship, 137 m LOA, built 2002 as Tyco Responder.
Subic Bay: Site of the former Hanjin Subic shipyard in the Philippines.
Submarine Cable Improvement Group (SCIG): PIANC working group on cable interaction with port and waterway works.
Submarine Cables Convention 1884: Paris Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables, signed by 40 states and the founding treaty for cable protection law.
SubOptic: Triennial submarine telecommunications conference organized by SubOptic Association, the principal industry event since 1986.
Sumas: US Pacific Northwest cable depot point of presence supporting West Coast cable landings.
Sumitomo Electric: Japanese cable manufacturer producing submarine power cables and umbilicals.

T

TAT-14: Older transatlantic telecommunications cable connecting the US, France, the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, and Denmark, in service from 2001 to 2020.
TE SubCom: Former name of SubCom under Tyco Electronics ownership before the 2018 Cerberus sale.
Telegeography: Washington-based research firm publishing the Submarine Cable Map and Industry Report, the de facto industry data reference.
Telstra Cable Maintenance: Australian MMA operator covering the South Pacific.
Test loop: Land-based cable test segment used by ASN, SubCom and NEC to qualify joints and BU prototypes.
TGN cable system: Tata Global Network, including TGN-Atlantic, TGN-Pacific and TGN-Intra Asia, operated by Tata Communications.
Touchdown monitoring: ROV-assisted observation of cable contact with seabed during deepwater lay to verify slack control.
Trans-Pacific Express (TPE): Trans-Pacific submarine cable system between China, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the United States.
Tyco Resolute: Original name of CS Reliance and CS Resolute pair, retained as fleet branding in legacy contracts.
Tyco Responder: Former name of SubCom Responder before the 2014 rebrand.

U

UJ (Universal Joint): ASN-designed field joint family allowing on-board jointing of repeatered cable using a single tooling set across LW, SA and DA cables.
UNCLOS Article 112: Right to lay submarine cables and pipelines on the bed of the high seas beyond the continental shelf.
UNCLOS Article 113: Provision requiring states to criminalize willful or negligent breaking of submarine cables and pipelines by persons under their jurisdiction.
UNCLOS Article 114: Liability of a cable owner who damages another cable while laying or repairing for the cost of the repairs.
UNCLOS Article 115: Compensation for vessels that sacrifice anchor, net or fishing gear to avoid damaging a submarine cable.
UNCLOS Article 79: Provision granting coastal states the right to take reasonable measures concerning pipelines on their continental shelf, subject to other states' freedom to lay cables.
Universal Quick Joint (UQJ): SubCom quick-jointing variant for in-line repair work.
URC-1: ASN repeater housing type, the first generation Universal Repeater Case, with internal modular optical units.
URC-2: ASN second-generation repeater housing supporting larger fiber pair counts for SDM systems.
URC-3: ASN repeater housing for high-fiber-pair-count systems including Dunant and 2Africa.

V

Valparaiso: Chilean city hosting the Acuerdo de Vina del Mar Secretariat.
Vercors: ASN cable ship Ile de Vercors, 120 m LOA, built 1985.
Victoria Cable: NKT Victoria's industry shortname.
Voltage gradient test: Pre-launch verification of cable jacket and insulation system integrity under PFE-injected DC voltage.

W

WACS: West Africa Cable System, 14,500 km in service 2012 by ASN, with landings from Yzerfontein (South Africa) to Highbridge (UK).
Watch Circle: Permitted area within which a moored buoy may swing under tide and wind.
Wave Mercury: Global Marine cable ship, 110 m LOA, built 1995 as CS Wave Mercury and contracted to ACMA.
Wave Sentinel: Global Marine cable ship, 110 m LOA, sister to Wave Mercury.
Wave Venture: Global Marine cable ship, 110 m LOA, built 1983 as Pacific Guardian (CS and W) and renamed in fleet realignment.
Welcoming joint: ASN slang for the first joint of a repair, where the cable end recovered from the seabed is joined to the new bight.
WFN Strategies: US submarine cable consulting firm performing project management and supplier qualification for many recent private systems.
WIOCC: West Indian Ocean Cable Company, owner-operator of EASSy, 2Africa landings and the new WIOCC Group cable depot at Mombasa.

X

X-Connect: Generic cross-connect term used in cable landing stations between SLTE and terrestrial backhaul.

Y

Yokohama: Sumitomo Electric submarine cable plant site since 1936, producing modern fiber cable for NEC system orders.

Z

Zafiro: ASN BU housing family for power-switched branches.
Zeus: B&G chartplotter platform for the sailing and motor yacht market within the Navico Group.