The owners of an immense $1.1-billion undersea cable network that carries internet and other telecommunications from Bermuda to the world do not believe the Island is ever likely to be stranded without a useable cable link.

However, Brasil Telecom has no objection to another undersea cable being plugged into Bermuda — even though it increases competition to its own enterprise — if that is the route Government wishes to pursue.

The Ministry of Telecommunications is currently deciding the way forward for the Island’s telecom sector and is considering doing away with the artificial barriers that currently separate various levels of telecommunication provision in Bermuda.

While the final format of the deregulation has yet to be announced, telecommunications director William Francis has revealed part of the reason for the shake-up is to encourage investment in a new undersea cable to give further security to the “life-blood” of international business on the Island.

It is estimated a new undersea cable between Bermuda and the US will cost anywhere between $25 million and $65 million, depending on whether it is simply a new branch line connecting with an existing trans-Atlantic cable or is a totally new and complete cable connection.

Bermuda is presently served by two Cable & Wireless (C&W) undersea cables, both of which are older-style and near their capacity-carrying limit, and the advanced high-capacity Brasil Telecom cable.

Brasil Telecom sells capacity on its cable to C&W and TeleBermuda (TBI), who in turn facilitate onshore providers such as North Rock Communications, Cellular One, Fort Knox, Logic and KeyTech.

Deconstructing Bermuda’s compartmentalised telecoms industry may or may not lead to Brasil Telecom entering the domestic market. The company has submitted its position to Government and is awaiting a reply before it makes any announcement.

However Erick Contag, the firm’s US and international marketing and sales executive, has explained why he believes the state-of-art, self-healing optic fibre cable the company has to Bermuda already provides all the connectivity security the Island is ever likely to need.

For one thing it is not a single cable but actually a “ring” of cable that comes from Tuckerton, south of New York, to St. David’s in Bermuda. The cable then heads down to Fortaleza on the coast of Brazil where it meets with another Brasil Telecom cable network “ring” that serves Rio de Janeiro and mainland Brazil.

From Fortaleza the cable loops back up to Venezuela, Florida and then to Tuckerton and New York.

Should there be a failure in Bermuda’s direct US link the network automatically re-routes all telecommunication traffic via Fortaleza. A packet of data send from Bermuda on the direct cable link to Tuckerton, New Jersey, takes 0.013 of a second. If the Bermuda-US leg fails the data re-routes south around the loop and takes ten times as long — or 0.128 of a second — to reach Tuckerton.

Such “blink of an eye” differences in data transmission would go practically unnoticed, according to Mr. Contag. And on the possibility of a simultaneous double failure on the 22,000-kilometre loop system, he said: “The probability of a dual failure is so remote, you really can’t see it ever happening.”

The vast cable ring started out as a purely Bermuda venture to provide an alternative to the two C&W cables linking to the US. It was started in 1997 and began operating in 1999. What followed was a massive injection of money from a US company called 360Networks that put in place the most advanced optic fibre submarine cable “ring” linking the Americas.

That network was acquired by Brasil Telecom Globenet in 2003. It includes cable landing station buildings, where the cable touches land, such as in St. David’s, that have been built to withstand category five hurricanes. The stations in South America are also built to withstand earthquakes.

Explaining the dangers faced by undersea cables, Mr. Contag said they can be cut, typically in shallow water where ship’s anchors or trawl fishing equipment snags it.

“Between the water movement and sand movement the cables may be exposed. In a single cable if something happens to it automatically your network is lost and there is nothing that you can do,” he said.

“The problem is you need a ship or several ships available to do the repair. And it can take five or ten days or more to reach the site. So the process is quite lengthy. That is why a ring configuration is so good. In a ring configuration you have equipment that is monitoring the undersea cable.

“If the cable fails the logic that is monitoring the submarine system automatically detects there is no light coming through (the fibre optics) and switches, in less than 50 milliseconds, to the other ring.

“It means that from Bermuda to the US you are on the short leg, if something happens to that leg automatically your data is going to go through the longer leg south out of Bermuda to Brazil, Venezuela and Florida and then north to New York. As a user you will not see anything.

“Some financial institutions or other enterprises that carefully monitor the time it takes to send data back and forth or people that are working on stock trades they are going to notice a difference because they are going to say ‘oh my network is slower’ but it’s not ‘oh, I don’t have a network’. We are the only ones in Bermuda that can provide a fully protected service without automatic fail-over and several levels of redundancy in the network.”

The Brasil Telecom cable has never had an “outage.”

As for cable capacity, it can handle 80 Gbs (gigibits) of data and has a total design capacity of 1.36 Tbs (terabits). Putting that in context Bermuda has at the moment access to 20Gbs of capacity on the network and uses about 10 percent of that.

Mr. Contag said Brasil Telecom welcomed the idea of deregulating Bermuda’s telecom sector.

“If Bermuda feels it needs another cable system we are fine with that. Although someone will have to justify the cost,” he said.

“Technologies are creating a converged service operation, particularly from a retail perspective. In the retail sector it’s very difficult to differentiate services, because it is the whole idea, vision and dream that a lot of people have had of ‘any time, anywhere, any device’.”