Cable & Wireless Plc is set to rule the waves with the simultaneous launch of its new marine company Cable & Wireless (Marine) Ltd, and the flagship of its cable laying fleet, Cable Innovator, which will lay the Nynex Corp Fibre-Optic Link Around the Globe (see page two). Cable & Wireless has been laying cables from its ships for 125 years, but Chelmsford, Essex-based Cable & Wireless Marine is the result of the company’s acquisition of British Telcommunications Plc’s BT (Marine) Ltd last November (CI No 2,534), and now has one of the largest cable fleets in the world with 11 cable ships and 18 subsea vehicles. The company had turnover of ú57.4m in 1994-95 and projected turnover for 1995-96 is ú150m. It claims now to have its largest-ever order book, with in excess of ú100m of forward orders. It has recently won a contract worth ú70m to lay some 70% of the cabling for Flag Ltd’s global network, and is due to start work in December. Cable & Wireless Marine will lay two of the longest segments from Palermo in Sicily to Mura in Japan.
Won the battle against satellite
The remaining sections will be laid by the company’s competitors AT&T Corp SSI and Japan’s Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. The company’s launch was timed to coincide with the launch of the ú55m Cable Innovator, the company’s first purpose-built fully stern-operating ship, which will head the fleet to lay the cable for the Flag Ltd project. The combination of laying cable from the stern of the ship, with the high power thrusters the ship has to keep it in place, enables cable-laying in up to storm force conditions, thus optimising the ship’s working time. Cable Innovator is operated by the latest technology, including a combined radar and automatic pilot system, Differential Global Positioning System which gives the ship’s position to an accuracy of about three feet, and a fully computerised engine room control enabling the engine room to be unmanned at night and while the ship is actually laying cable. Systems for laying the cables with the correct tensions and keeping the ship in position are also fully computerised, minimising the number of crew required to work the ship. Cable Innovator works with a crew of 80, 34 officers and 46 crew. It can carry up to 8,500 tonnes of cable, or enough to run cable from the UK to Venezuela. As well as providing cable-laying services for Cable & Wireless itself, the Marine company also sells its services to all of the major telecommunications operators. Cable & Wireless Plc chairman Lord Young said fibre optic cable had won the battle against satellite and proved its superiority, with third generation cables able to carry up to 600,000 simultaneous calls. He said the market was extremely healthy, and with the price of cable technology falling, it was becoming viable for local, coastal systems as well as trans-ocean communications. He also had to answer the questions that have been exercising the City over the future of the group in light of AT&T Corp’s decision to break itself up into a computer company, an equipment company, and a global telecommunications operator and services company very like Cable & Wireless is now. The company may not be growing earnings per share fast enough for the City, but as Lord Young pointed out, if it were to break itself up, all of the bits would need to seek – or renew – alliances.
