Abstract
From the very first subsea telegraph cables laid in the second half of the 19th century, subsea cables were
owned by private companies with concessions for landing licenses in foreign countries. After the recognition
of sovereign power over telecommunications, subsea telephone cables were laid in the form of joint efforts
of monopolies of each country in the 1950s and ʼ60s. This was the beginning of “cable consortia”. Around the
year 2000, in the middle of the “cable bubble,” “private cables” emerged while consortia with a very large
number of participants were formed. After the bubble burst, an attempt was made to form consortia with
fewer participants to achieve faster decision making. However, the question remains as to why cable owners
still try to form consortia even though some of them have enough monetary funds and engineering expertise.
This paper argues that current cable owners seek to lay both privately owned cables and consortium cables to
make their network most resilient.
