3 Questions with 7 Industry Players

By SubTel Forum
May 18, 2020

Talking the Evolving Reality with BT Ireland, Fugro, Global Marine Group, Hexatronic, International Telecom, NEC and WFN Strategies

On March 12, as companies worked to assess how project timelines and capacity would be affected by the looming threat of a global pandemic, the situation became more anxious with the announcement by the U.S. President Trump that there would be a travel ban on Europe. This followed a ban on China in January. Within a month, practically the whole world had come to a standstill. Only the most necessary of industries were still active. Companies working on a myriad of projects already slowed by caps on group numbers and social distancing were given a rude awakening to how difficult times could get.

Two months later, the use of the internet has seen a global high, with streaming services seeing large increases in use of bandwidth; schools corporations and families alike have become dependent on video chat services like Zoom and Google Meet; and we have no way to know when we can get back to “normal.” The submarine telecoms industry is responsible for the global infrastructure that has kept meetings happening, money being spent online, and students meeting in digital classrooms. As such, more stress than ever before has been put on this industry. For that reason, Submarine Telecoms Forum reached out to members of the industry to ask how things are going.

For this Q&A, we spoke to six individuals, asking them each three questions:

• What would you like the world to know about how the pandemic has affected your company, or your day to day work environment?
• Have supply issues changed the timeline you had set for the projects you are working on, and if so, how are you handling these changes?
• What are you plans moving forward in the coming weeks and months?

We’d like to thank Derek Cassidy of BT Ireland, René Avezac de Moran of Fugro, Ian Douglas of Global Marine Group, Anders Ljung of Hexatronic, John Graham of International Telecom, Motoyoshi Tokioka of NEC, and Hector Hernandez of WFN Strategies, for taking the time to tell up us bit about their businesses during these uncertain times.

To continue reading the rest of this article, please read it in Issue 112 of the SubTel Forum Magazine on page 16 or on our archive site here.