A large boat made waves off the coast of Pismo Beach as it installed parts of an ocean-spanning fiber optic cable network Tuesday afternoon.
The CS Rene Descartes — a 470-foot French cable-laying ship — was visible from most southern San Luis Obispo County communities Tuesday afternoon as it continued work on installing a fiber optic cable network, RTI Solutions president Chris Brungardt told The Tribune. Conduit Pipe
Brungardt said the ship was also in the area performing related work in late April, installing fiber optic cable under the ocean floor for the JUNO cable network that will bridge the United States and Japan with thousands of miles of 1-inch-thick data cables.
Cables installed by ships like the CS Rene Descartes come ashore at a steel conduit that was installed in 2022 before terminating in a vault onshore at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area parking lot at the end of Grand Avenue, Brungardt said.
With trans-Pacific cables currently networking Grover Beach to the rest of the world, the area has proved a popular hub for submarine cables, Brungardt said. Around 95% of the world’s telecommunications traffic is carried by undersea fiber optic cables, he said.
Brungardt said Grover Beach and Morro Bay are two of the most popular locations for undersea fiber optic connections in California because they are equidistant to Los Angeles and San Francisco while being one of the closest mainland points to Hawaii, and have fewer restrictions against the installation of such cables than Santa Barbara or Monterey counties.
Galvanized Pipe Tube Brungardt said the CS Rene Descartes has finished its work off the shore of San Luis Obispo County and will depart soon, but residents of the area will likely see a similar ship performing similar duties in August, when a sixth submarine cable connecting Oregon, California, Guam and Singapore will be added to Grover Beach’s hub through a similar pipe-laying procedure.