RETN CEO warns subsea route diversity remains limited

RETN CEO Tony O'Sullivan said in an interview with Light Reading that limited meaningful diversity in subsea network routes leaves global connectivity vulnerable.

TL;DR

• RETN CEO Tony O'Sullivan said subsea network diversity is often not meaningful enough to prevent shared points of failure.
• The warning was published by Light Reading in an interview focused on global subsea connectivity risk.
• The core issue is that apparently separate routes can still depend on the same underlying infrastructure or corridors.

Tony O'Sullivan, CEO of RETN, told Light Reading that so-called "fake diversity" in subsea networks can create a false sense of resilience. His point was that routes presented as diverse may still share physical paths or critical infrastructure, which can leave networks exposed to the same outage event.

The interview framed the issue as a risk to global connectivity because subsea cables carry a large share of international communications traffic. If multiple services rely on infrastructure that is not truly separate, a single disruption can affect more than one route at the same time.

Light Reading reported O'Sullivan's comments as a warning about the structure of current subsea connectivity rather than an announcement of a new product, investment, or policy. The article focused on network resilience and the need for meaningful route separation in subsea infrastructure.

Related questions

• What did RETN CEO Tony O'Sullivan say about subsea network diversity?
• Why can "fake diversity" increase the risk of subsea cable outages?
• How can shared subsea routes affect global connectivity resilience?