More than 170 submarine cable repairs were reported worldwide in 2025, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Building the cables is only part of the challenge. Fixing them at sea takes specialized ships and crews.

In an August 28, 2026 update, the International Cable Protection Committee described a new global comparison of repair-start times, based on anonymized industry data. The research is intended to identify permitting and operational delays. Its public summary does not provide average waiting times; the full report is available by request.

Repair crews locate a fault, raise the cable from the seabed, remove the damaged section, splice in replacement fiber and lower it again. Weather, ship availability and access permissions can affect how quickly work begins.

Most breaks are accidental, often involving fishing equipment or anchors. Networks with several cable routes can redirect traffic, but regions with limited connections face greater risk of disruption.

Following a Baltic Sea cable incident, a January 2026 post shared footage of Finnish authorities boarding a ship suspected of involvement. The post documents an investigation, not proof of what caused the damage.

As our report on U.S. cable manufacturer SubCom showed, new infrastructure matters. So do repair vessels, backup routes and the skills behind fiber-optic cable work. Those safeguards help protect the bandwidth and latency on which global services depend.