Rui Faria, Angola Cables' executive board member and chief commercial officer, has been appointed to the newly constituted 42-member International Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Agency for Digital Technologies, and the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), an industry group that promotes submarine cable protection, recently announced the formation of the International Advisory Body.

Subsea cables and related equipment provide the foundation for the global digital economy, allowing more than 99% of international data exchange and enabling communication, finance, cloud services, and key infrastructure to operate effortlessly across borders.

Despite their crucial importance, submarine cables are vulnerable to a variety of threats, including natural disasters and inadvertent damage. With the world's reliance on stable, high-speed internet expanding by the day, the resilience and protection of these cables from natural and human threats has become critical.

Commenting on his nomination, Faria stated that the Advisory Body plays an important role in ensuring the future integrity of these critical intercontinental, undersea cables.

Faria said: “As a company, we have been providing technical support to an extensive scientific research project being done by the Department of Geography and Earth Science at Durham University in the UK into the cause and impact of the natural occurring cable failures that have taken place in the Congo River Canyon Crossing in West Africa.

“With more cables coming into operation in the future, more efforts will need to be made in identifying and mitigating accidental damage or other existential risks that can negatively impact submarine cable networks and this makes the task of this multi-stakeholder advisory body that much more important.”