In the Hot Seat at Submarine Networks EMEA 2025

Submarine Networks EMEA 2025 was once again a great opportunity to network with the great and the good of the subsea industry. Over two days in London, it brought together more than 1000 senior leaders for a packed agenda of networking, panel discussions, and technical presentations. 

Personally, at these events I always look forward to hearing from peers about the very specific trends and issues that they’re facing - it’s such a broad industry in many ways but often a lot of the challenges we face in our individual roles and at our respective businesses are universal, no matter the specific area we’re operating in. 

So of course, I jumped at the chance to speak to Isabelle Paradis of Hot Telecom about the state of the subsea cable industry from an Aqua Comms point of view, in one of her infamous ‘HotShot’ interviews at this year’s event. 

A changing global landscape‍

With the subsea industry receiving more mainstream coverage than ever (not all of it helpful) thanks to some high-profile cable aggressions this year, it was great to have the opportunity to highlight some of the specific initiatives and challenges that we’re currently working through at Aqua Comms.

The current global geopolitical situation means that many countries are waking up to the importance of subsea networks at a strategic level, which in turn is increasing the pressure on Government policymakers to look at what they need to do to protect these networks and make them a core part of a country’s national resilience planning. This has quite a big impact on my role as general counsel, which obviously has a big focus on regulation and regulatory changes.

Sustainability and AI

At Aqua Comms we have ambitious ESG goals - we’ve long believed that sustainability is a responsibility, not a choice - and how we balance these alongside the rocketing demand for capacity being driven by AI, is another key area we’re navigating at the moment. 

We’re currently focused on not only reducing carbon use, but also looking at the source of the carbon. Aqua Comms has been working on this for a few years now, and I’m proud to say that all of our CLS and PoP locations in the UK, Denmark, and Ireland are now 100% renewable. We’re also constantly looking at how we can reduce our overall carbon footprint which includes everything from how we work with our partners, to removing unused equipment and examining the makeup of the equipment we use.

I should note that organisations like SubOptic are doing a great job in establishing best practices around sustainability, sharing information, and generally keeping the message out there to promote positive change across the whole industry. 

Nurturing the next generation of talent‍

Finally, it was great to have the opportunity to highlight the incredible talent that’s coming into the industry - I think it’s incumbent upon everyone working in subsea to support that. Enough said. Enjoy the video. 

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