The Continental Shelf Associates (CSA) family of companies takes pride in crafting creative venues and consumables for its annual employee party held in Stuart, Florida. Previous years have seen us eating crawdads or having a fish fry, usually outdoors at picnic tables under festive tents and surrounded by games for the kids and adults alike.

With the proliferation of new, high capacity cable systems and the excitement that surrounds bringing these cables into service, the question of what to do with older systems is not necessarily the most interesting topic. Nonetheless, the question of when to retire an older cable system is one that many of us in the industry will be called upon to address. A bit over a year ago, OSI was asked to evaluate an older cable and determine whether continued operation made sense. While the details of that analysis remain private, some of the key questions are relevant to any similar analysis.

It is with our warmest aloha that we say goodbye to PTC19. With over 7900 attendees from more than 75 nations, the conference proved to be, once more, a hub for telecommunication industry networking, not only in the Asia Pacific region but worldwide. In addition to the ever-growing presence of the the large content provider projects, independently-owned regional systems continue to be announced.  This year was also marked by significant acquisition activity in the system supplier sector, with major suppliers in play.

Ocean Specialists will be attending and participating at the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s Conference in Honolulu Hawaii (PTC19), January 20th thru the 23rd. Tony Mosley, Director of Business Development at OSI, will co-host the Submarine Cable Workshop on the conference’s opening day, where the panel will focus on new subsea cable builds around the world and the challenges that they face.

Now in its 41st year, PTC is the leading Pacific Rim telecommunication event, with over 2000 attendees from all over the world. This year’s theme, “From Pipes to Platforms,” explores the connection possibilities for the exponentially growing bandwidth demand (pipes) seen currently in the industry.

OSI is heading out in mid-January for the 2019 Pacific Telecommunication Conference in Honolulu Hawaii, where Tony Mosely, OSI Director of Business Development, will co-host the Submarine Cable Workshop on 19 January 2019, along with Elaine Stafford of DRG Undersea Consulting.

Ocean Specialists Inc. (OSI) attended the OCEANS Conference and Exposition in Charleston this past October and we wanted to offer a few thoughts on the opportunities present at the IEEE/MTS conference. The conference was well attended and dominated by the big players, especially the US Navy and their contractors. In spite of the dominant presence of larger corporations, there were still new opportunities for smaller businesses and individuals. In particular, the U.S. Navy Task Force Ocean could be of interest.