Metrics for measuring the robustness of the undersea cable infrastructure: A road to standardization

No universally accepted metrics currently exist to assess and track the resiliency, reliability, and growth of the Undersea Cable Infrastructure (UCI). Standards are needed to ensure the continued development of a resilient and reliable UCI. This paper discusses current standards efforts at the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) Performance, Reliability, and Quality Committee (PRQC) to standardize such metrics in an effort to ensure robust UCI and the end-to-end integrity of the global telecommunications network infrastructure. The PRQC recently issued ATIS Technical Report ATIS-0100031, A Method to Display Metrics Related to the Resiliency of the Undersea Cable Infrastructure, which was approved March 2011. This paper (i) provides an overview of the methodology described in ATIS-0100031 and (ii) highlights a need to complement the ATIS Standards Outage Index currently used for wireline, cable TV, wireless, and satellite telecommunications service outages, with metrics to incorporate the UCI environment, thus fulfilling a related recommendation from the IEEE ROGUCCI Global Summit in Dubai (27-29 October 2009) 1. This paper also discusses (i) a set of factors that influence the resiliency, reliability, and growth of the UCI metrics associated with these factors, and (ii) a method of visualizing (based on an ITU-T international standard) these metrics in a single diagram, which could be used by assorted interested parties. Readers are encouraged to obtain a copy of for more in-depth information.