New €1.5 million platform to provide automated satellite backup for submarine cable networks
Multi-orbit satcom operations specialist neXat has been selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) to lead a €1.5 million project to automate satellite backup for submarine fibre networks.
The company will work with satellite operator Telesat and telecoms infrastructure provider Colt Technology Services Belgium to design, build and field-demonstrate a system that detects submarine cable interruptions and switches affected traffic to satellite connectivity without manual intervention.
The development of neXat’s new innovative system, called CableShield, will be carried out and funded under the Space Systems for safety and Security (4S) programme, within ESA’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES) programme.
“Submarine cables carry an estimated 99% of global connectivity, so when they go down, entire regions can lose access instantly, disrupting business, public services and other critical communications,” said Caroline De Vos, COO of neXat. “Satellite provides the lifeline that keeps essential services online when their primary connectivity is gone. Having a dedicated multi-orbit platform like neXat's ensures service providers can access and manage backup connectivity effectively when it is needed the most.”
Roughly 30% of the world's tracked submarine cables experience at least one fault every year, and repairs typically take 10 to 20 days to complete. With submarine cables carrying an estimated 99% of intercontinental data traffic, a single fault can leave an entire route offline for weeks. This can disrupt banks, cloud platforms, government networks and other mission-critical services that have no automated fallback in place.
To provide strong and resilient backup, the satellite platform will involve multiple satellite providers in a so-called “Pooling & Sharing” mode.
In the event of an interruption, the platform will select and allocate the necessary satellite resources by interfacing with pooling and sharing mechanisms, and reroute a controllable, scalable subset of data over the selected satellite capacity. This will be achieved by establishing an end-to-end connection with appropriate routing and traffic prioritisation protocols.
“We are delighted to be selected by ESA following a competitive Invitation to Tender,” said Thierry Eltges, CEO of neXat. “CableShield aligns perfectly with our mission to deliver secure operations and business support systems for satellite and terrestrial network operators alike, letting them work as one system rather than as parallel silos. We look forward to bringing that expertise to this project alongside Colt and Telesat.”
CableShield ties together three layers of infrastructure through a common orchestration framework, rather than relying on a single vendor's network, involving Detection and decision layers as well as Terrestrial and Satellite control layers.
The three layers communicate through the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) defined in ESA's Pooling and Sharing Interface Definitions (PSID) activity. This is a standard set of interfaces that let multi-vendor, multi-orbit satcom systems exchange data, request capacity and manage shared resources as a single, unified system.
CableShield runs over an 18-month development and validation programme ahead of a targeted commercial launch of the backup service in 2028. This is aligned with the commercial entry into service of Telesat's Lightspeed constellation.
