back to article Sliced your submarine cable? Fill in this paperwork

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has approved new rules that will require companies to report outages in submarine cables. Although submarine cables account for 95 per cent of the US' international internet traffic, as well as voice and data, the rules over reporting outages are weak and in most cases are simply …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wow

    "As usual, the two Republican commissioners voted against the proposal and issued statements explaining why. Somewhat less usually, their arguments were valid."

    How about you reserve biased comments for editorials and not for news stories?

    I personally don't get why the FCC itself cares about outages. Surely the users of the services care much more than the bureaucrats.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Wow

      The ironic thing about their objections is that right now there's no way of quantifying the losses caused by lack of communications.

      Having an incident register is the first part of proving it. Until then it's just conjecture.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wow

      Is it bias or observation that republicans - in whatever capacity - tend to take on an obstructionist attitude towards efforts to organize society? Is it bias to note that the majority of republican's arguments, whatever the topic may be, are not necessarily logical, scientific, practical or otherwise in any common interest, but reflect either their own private interests or those of the particular lobbygroup or agency that managed to provide a compelling enough "rewards system" to them. Otherwise they just have "ways to try to shut that whole thing down *)" so nothing new can come into the world.

      So yes, El Reg, call a spade a spade *) by all means.

      * Todd Akin on rape, 2012

      * Patirck Rothfuss: “Call a jack a jack. Call a spade a spade. But always call a whore a lady. Their lives are hard enough, and it never hurts to be polite.”

  2. Mage Silver badge

    Pedantic

    The photo is a 75 Ohm coaxial cable on an F connector. Not even optical.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pedantic

      Yep. That's a stock photo for "Cutting the cable", as in cancelling one's Cable TV service because most everything is available via the internet.

      A better photo would have been the USS Jimmy Carter at work with a thought bubble saying, "Oops."

    2. PNGuinn
      IT Angle

      Re: Pedantic

      ... being "cut" with a wrench.

      FCC supplied photo?

      C'mon El REg - check the press release photo first?

      Or was it a leaky cable?

      1. Alister
        Boffin

        Re: Pedantic

        ... being "cut" with a wrench.

        It's a pair of side-cutters...

        1. Disk0
          Coat

          Re: Pedantic

          Potentially about to be cut, I don't see any cutting action whatsoever in the photo. One can only hope.

  3. Herby

    Notification...

    We have a TV Advert here in the USA that tells of a "notifier" that tells you that something is happening, then doesn't do anything to fix it (it is for a identity protection company which I won't name). This sounds like the same thing. A note goes to the FCC "the cable is out" and life goes on as usual. I can't see much coming from this other than TPS cover sheets that do absolutely nothing.

    I'd go to the beach and cut a wire underground just to file a report to see what happens. My guess is "not much".

    1. AdamT

      Re: Notification...

      well, given that the contents of that cable could be at around 9kV I'm guessing that a number of paper-work inducing events will ensue...

      But, I agree, this new "FCC Outage Report" will probably be the least of them.

  4. Gray
    Facepalm

    Yet another small expansion

    Other than the fact that the FCC will now require an additional Cable Performance and Outage Reports section, requiring the addition of a chief administrator, two deputy assistants, three secretaries, four reports evaluation and logging specialists, and a small team of database implementation specialists, there's not to be much change. Budget impacts will be negligible upon implementation of the new CPOR report filing and recording fees, and a fee for issuance of compliance certifications.

  5. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
    Pirate

    Jurisdiction Issues

    Submarine cables run through an environment where there is no clear regulatory jurisdiction. Dig up a terrestrial buried cable and the government entity that granted the original permit for it can track incidents. We have 'One Call' locating services that utilities support to mark their facilities and report compliance and damage. But under water, local and state governments' authority runs out just off shore. So someone needs to accumulate statistics to see if there are problems or not. If cables are being damaged, imposing more regulation on dredging operations or dropping anchors without checking the charts is going to need justification.

  6. mark 177
    FAIL

    Do the Maths!

    Fail, El Reg.

    $550,000/$9,000 /= 161

    1. ratfox

      Re: Do the Maths!

      $9,000 per licensee. From which I deduct that licensees have on average about three cables and a half each.

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