Global Marine Group is a British-headquartered specialist provider of installation, maintenance and repairs of submarine communications cable for the telecommunications, oil & gas and deep sea research industries. To this end, they operate their own a fleet of vessels, ROVs and specialised subsea trenching and burial equipment. Formerly known as Cable & Wireless Marine and

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

Marine, it was purchased by

Global Crossing Global Crossing was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and video confer ...

in 1999, at which time it received the name it carries today. In 2004, Global Marine Systems was purchased by Bridgehouse Marine and was completely restructured. In September 2014, Global Marine was acquired by HC2, and in 2020 by J F Lehman and partners. Historically, the company has a legacy of over 160 years of cable installation, stemming from the first telegraph cables laid in the 1850s. CS Sovereign

Global Marine has a worldwide presence, with offices in

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

, UK and Singapore; depots in Portland, UK; Bermuda; Victoria, Canada;

Batangas Batangas, officially the Province of Batangas ( tl, Lalawigan ng Batangas ), is a province in the Philippines located in the Calabarzon region on Luzon. Its capital is the city of Batangas, and is bordered by the provinces of Cavite and La ...

, Philippines and

Batam Batam is the largest city in the province of Riau Islands, Indonesia. The city administrative area covers three main islands of Batam, Rempang, and Galang (collectively called Barelang), as well as several small islands. Batam Island is the cor ...

, Indonesia; Ships are stationed around the world to support both installation of new cables and the maintenance and protection of existing cables. The company is also involved in joint ventures with

China Telecom China Telecom Corp., Ltd. is a Chinese telecommunications company. It is one of the red chip listed companies of state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation. Its H shares have been traded on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong since 15 Novembe ...

and

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

. Since 2002 Global Marine has become increasingly active in the installation of submarine power cables and gained significant market share in the European Offshore Renewables market, in addition to undertaking a number of large power interconnect projects. The company was responsible for installing the cables connecting the turbines on a host of

windfarm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...

projects including Blythe (one of the first trial farms), Horns Rev 1 (the first major commercial windfarm in Denmark), Thornton Bank,

Kentish Flats Kentish may be used as a name: *Kentish Council is a local government area in Tasmania, Australia *Kentish Town is an area of north west London, England Kentish as a surname: *John Kentish (minister), 1768–1853 *John Kentish (tenor), 1910&nd ...

and others. To support this business Global Marine formed a subsidiary in 2011 called Global Marine Energy. The development of the energy business included the opening of a new office in

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

and the construction of a specialist vessel, ''Cable Enterprise''. The subsidiary company was sold to

Prysmian Group Prysmian S.p.A. is an Italian company with headquarters in Milan, specialising in the production of electrical cable for use in the energy and telecom sectors and for optical fibres. Prysmian is present in North America with 23 plants, 48 in Eur ...

, the world’s largest cable manufacturer at the time of sale, in September 2012. Global Marine today focuses primarily on supporting the telecoms, oil & gas and deep sea research markets.

Group historical achievements

* 1988 Installed first transatlantic fibre optic submarine cable, TAT-8, * 1989 Installed first private transatlantic fibre optic submarine cable, PTAT * 1990 Installed first transpacific fibre optic submarine cable, NPC * 1992 First to plough unarmoured cable over 1,000 km in one continuous operation between Brunei and Singapore * 1994 First to post-lay bury to 2,000 metres, Pacific Rim West * 1995 First to bury cable to 10 metres and 4 metres in rock, APCN * 1997 Installed first dedicated internet cable between US and UK * 2003 Achieved deepest water ploughing to a depth of 1699m on the Svalbard system installed 1,350 km within the Arctic Circle. * 2010 Achieved deepest recorded cable burial at Port Klang in Malaysia achieving 14 meters on a power cable connecting to the Island of Pulau Ketam * 2014 Global Marine was awarded the Order of Distinction by RoSPA in recognition of the company's 15th consecutive year of outstanding occupational health and safety results. * 2014 Global Marine installed the 2014 Uninett project in Svalbard Norway, delivering the world's most northerly fibre optic cable system, deep within the Arctic Circle. To date Global Marine has installed over 300,000 km of subsea cable, 23% of the world's total. In addition to this Global Marine with joint venture partners has performed 35% of maintenance operations on world fibre optic cables.

References

{{BT Group BT Group Companies based in Chelmsford British companies established in 1999 Engineering companies of the United Kingdom