2020 has been a tough year from many perspectives and we’re all hopeful for new beginnings in 2021. Among the new challenges this past year has introduced, a pandemic and geopolitics. While a cure is on the way, geopolitics may have influenced our industry in some new and somewhat surprising ways- presenting both challenges and opportunities.
Starting with the positive – according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, historic geopolitical barriers to new cable routes are breaking down in the Middle East. Regional transit routes previously not believed possible, much less commercially-viable, are on the horizon. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal mentions two such projects who are each charting new paths- Blue Raman and Trans Europe Asia System, or TEAS. TEAS is being developed by Cinturion (a DRG client). When complete, TEAS will connect Europe and India providing new diverse routes without transiting Egypt. Eqypt, who has served (and may well continue to serve) as the world’s primary regional conduit for global communications between Asia and Europe – but perhaps now, they’ll be less exclusive. As we all know, to be attractive to customers, a new cable must be reliable, competitive, and accessible. Once completed, TEAS will meet all of these requirements and more. When compared with traditional Red Sea routes via Egypt, TEAS will have the unique advantages of both geographic diversity and low latency. The project, therefore, appears to be getting broad customer interest as well as local support as reported in the WSJ. Its article quotes Cinturion’s CEO Greg Varisco, “Recent politics in the region is certainly in favor of what we’re doing.” To read the article from the Wall Street Journal in its entirety, click here.
DRG is looking forward to a broader discussion on the impact of geopolitics on the subsea industry at PTC’21. This will be just one of the many interesting panel discussions at PTC’s annual SubCable Workshop, sponsored again this year by SubOptic. PTC’21 will be a virtual event, but this hasn’t stopped the organizers from lining up a stellar program and set of panelists for the 18th and 19th of January. One of the many interesting things on the agenda will be a panel of industry leaders from across the globe, moderated by Elaine Stafford, who will discuss both how geopolitics has shaped our industry and continues to do the same today, and how the subsea industry as a whole, might take a more active role in navigating these challenges and opportunities. We hope you’ll sign up for PTC and be able to join us for a very interesting series of presentations and discussions! To register for PTC‘21, click here.
To stay up to date with the latest news about DRG and our clients, don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
