The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Telecommunications carry emergency calls, warnings, payments, business and government. Mobile and fixed networks depend on power, backhaul links, data centres and, between continents, a small number of submarine cables. This page sets out how communications fail, from local power loss to cable cuts, how resilience is measured, and what evidence serves the operators and regulators who keep networks running.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Telecom resilience is the ability of communications networks to keep carrying calls, warnings and data through power loss, cable cuts and surges in demand. Mobile sites depend on batteries, intercontinental traffic on a few submarine cable corridors, and services on concentrated data centres. Repair capacity sets how long outages last.
For telecommunications and cables, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, true-colour imagery and population density with relief in 3D and true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Western Europe; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
Connected activity, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
For telecommunications and cables, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on night lights, true-colour imagery and population density with relief in 3D and true colour from NASA GIBS, framed on Western Europe; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Telecommunications and cables · Lifeline system A · Register v5
| SS-12 | Electricity | Tier 1 | Flood 1-in-100 | 22 |
| WTW-2 | Water | Tier 1 | Flood 1-in-100 | 42 |
| DX-1 | Telecom | Tier 2 | Heat | 11 |
| H-Campus | Health | Tier 1 | Earthquake | 52 |
| PN-3 | Transport | Tier 2 | Storm surge | n/a |
red: SS-12 and its dependants
Communications, data links and shared dependencies. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Mobile sites have batteries and sometimes generators for hours of backup. Widespread power outages longer than that take sites off air, often exactly when people need to call for help.
Submarine cables carry nearly all intercontinental data and land at a limited number of stations. Anchors, fishing, seabed movement and deliberate damage can cut several cables in one corridor.
Applications and network functions are hosted in a few data centres and cloud regions. Their power, cooling and connectivity become shared dependencies for many services.
Cable repair needs specialised ships, permits and calm weather. Limited repair capacity means outages can last weeks when several cables fail.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Submarine cable | A fibre-optic cable laid on the seabed that carries telecommunications between landmasses. |
| Landing station | The facility where a submarine cable comes ashore and connects to land networks. |
| Backhaul | The links that connect mobile sites and local networks to the core network. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile sites off air | percent of sites | hourly during events | Operator reports to regulators | REPORTED |
| Network outage incidents | count by cause | annual | Regulator incident reporting | OFFICIAL |
| Submarine cable landings per country | count of cable systems | annual | Cable databases | REPORTED |
| International bandwidth redundancy | count of independent routes | annual | Network route analysis | ESTIMATED |
| Base station backup duration | hours | per site class | Operator design standards | DECLARED |
| Cable repair time | days from fault to repair | per event | Operator and industry reports | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| ENISA annual telecom security incident reports | Aggregated incident reports from EU member states by cause and impact | Public, ENISA terms |
| US FCC Network Outage Reporting System summaries and Disaster Information Reporting System | Outage reporting and cell site status during disasters | Public summaries, US government |
| TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map | Submarine cable systems and landing stations | Licence to check (CC BY-NC-SA for the map data) |
| ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators | Network coverage and connectivity statistics by country | Free for some tables, ITU terms (to check) |
| International Cable Protection Committee recommendations | Industry recommendations on cable protection and repair | Members; public summaries |
Critical Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Telecommunications regulators | What resilience and backup obligations to set for operators | Outage data; backup reviews |
| Network operators | Where to add route diversity and backup power | Route analyses; incident patterns |
| Governments and port authorities | How to protect cable landings and corridors | Cable concentration and repair evidence |
Communications networks are designed with redundancy, but diversity on paper is not always diversity in the ground. Separate operators may lease capacity on the same fibre, routes may converge on one bridge or landing station, and many services depend on a small number of data centres and internet exchange points. When those shared points fail, apparently independent services fail together.
Power is the dominant dependency. Mobile base stations and street cabinets typically hold limited battery backup, so extended power outages lead to progressive loss of coverage, just when people need to call for help. Submarine cables carry most intercontinental data traffic; faults from anchors, fishing, seabed movement and deliberate damage are repaired by a small fleet of specialized ships, so repair times can be long.
Cyber intrusion is a further pathway, studied with Cybersecurity and Digital Resilience.
Graph methods from network science and contagion identify chokepoints and shared routes.
Physical route records show whether redundant links truly follow separate paths.
Engineering analysis from communications and network technology and space systems and satellite services assesses backup duration and alternative links.
Route and capacity data is commercially sensitive and often unavailable. Public maps of cables and exchanges are incomplete, and network behaviour under heavy emergency load is hard to test.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.