Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN): Why France Nationalized the World's Biggest Subsea Cable Maker

As covered in Only four companies in the world can build submarine cables, only a handful of companies worldwide can build a submarine cable from scratch. ASN stands at the head of that list.

What kind of company is ASN, and how did it get here?

ASN (Alcatel Submarine Networks) is the French company that manufactures, lays and maintains submarine cables — the world's largest player in submarine cable systems. It is headquartered in Les Ulis near Paris (Paris-Saclay) and employs about 2,000 people, of whom 1,370 are based in France (Wikipedia).

ASN's origins trace back to 19th-century submarine telegraphy, but it took its current shape as a division of France's Alcatel. When Finland's Nokia acquired Alcatel-Lucent in 2016, ASN came under Nokia's ownership, where it remained from 2016 to 2024.

The turning point came in 2024. On June 27, 2024, Nokia announced an agreement to sell ASN to the French state (APE, the government shareholding agency). The enterprise value was about 350 million euros, with the French government acquiring 80% of the capital and Nokia retaining 20% for a time to support the transition. The sale closed on December 31, 2024, making ASN a French state-owned enterprise (Nokia).

Behind the nationalization is the recognition that submarine cables are a strategic national-security asset. Submarine cables — the undersea fiber-optic cables linking continents — carry over 99% of international communications. Rather than leave the world's largest maker in foreign hands, the state chose to hold the infrastructure directly (Data Center Dynamics).

What is ASN's business, and how big is it?

ASN's business is vertically integrated, handling submarine cable manufacturing, laying and maintenance end to end. It builds cables and repeaters in its factories, lays them with its own cable ships — vessels purpose-built for laying cable on the seabed — and dispatches repair ships to restore service when faults occur in operation.

Manufacturing centers on factories in Calais, France, and Greenwich, in the UK. These plants build the cable itself and the repeaters — devices placed every few dozen kilometers that amplify the weakened optical signal so it can travel farther.

Laying and maintenance rest on the fleet. ASN owns 7 specialized ships and can complete everything from installation to repair in-house. Its cumulative track record is large: over 700,000 km of cable laid as of early 2022, and over 800,000 km as of 2024 (Wikipedia).

The business structure breaks down as follows.

Holding everything from component sourcing to undersea maintenance in-house is what defines ASN's business. For the full picture of how submarine cables come ashore and enter operation, see Your videos and meetings travel the bottom of the sea, not space.

Where do ASN's technical strengths lie?

ASN's technical strength is its ability to design and manufacture the wet plant — the complete set of undersea equipment — as one integrated system. The wet plant is the collective name for the hardware that goes into the sea: the cable itself, the repeaters, and the branching units on the seabed. Unlike land-based equipment, it must be engineered to withstand water pressure at depths of thousands of meters and 25 years of operation without replacement.

The first strength is integrated design of cable and repeater. Transmitting over long distances at low loss requires jointly optimizing the cable's optical fiber and the repeater's amplification characteristics. Because ASN builds both in-house, it can more easily maximize performance.

The second strength is long-haul, high-capacity capability. Even on routes of thousands of kilometers spanning the Pacific or Atlantic in one run, ASN chains repeaters in multiple stages to carry huge capacity. In recent years, a technique called space-division multiplexing — packing many bundles of optical fiber into a single cable — has sharply increased capacity per cable.

The third strength is a setup that does not end at construction, built on the cable fleet and maintenance network. By keeping laying precision, route selection and post-cut recovery in-house, ASN underwrites the reliability of the whole system. The concrete process by which ships raise and splice a severed cable is covered in Broken submarine cables are fished up by ships and spliced back together (Mordor Intelligence).

What role does ASN play in the supply chain?

Within the supply chain, ASN is the most upstream supplier — the one that builds the physical layer on the seabed. For data centers and clouds to run, the submarine cables connecting them must exist first. ASN is the entity that supplies that undersea infrastructure itself.

The lead buyers today are hyperscalers. Cloud giants — Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft — keep ordering dedicated submarine cables to link their data centers, the hyperscale facilities operating vast numbers of servers, on a global scale. Consortia of telecom carriers were once the main customers, but today it is increasingly common for a single tech giant to build an entire cable on its own.

When an ASN-supplied cable reaches shore, it connects to the terrestrial network at a landing station — the facility where a submarine cable joins the land network. In Japan, landing stations concentrate in Chiba and Mie; that structure is covered in Japan's internet converges on just two places: Chiba and Mie. From the standpoint of redundancy — laying multiple routes so that communications survive a single cable cut — the capacity to supply new cables also matters.

In this way, ASN sits at the origin of the supply chain as the supplier of the invisible foundation of AI infrastructure.

What are ASN's market position and competitive structure?

ASN holds the position of world leader in newly built submarine cable systems. In 2018 — the most recent year with clearly published figures — ASN led with a 30% global share, ahead of NEC (23%) and SubCom (20%). As of 2024, the oligopoly persists, with ASN, SubCom and NEC together accounting for over 60% of wet-plant revenue (Wikipedia / industry).

A five-forces view of this market looks like this.

The table points to three takeaways. First, incumbent rivalry is strong: on top of the oligopolistic contest with SubCom, NEC and HMN Tech, China's HMN Tech is gaining ground in emerging-market projects, armed with price competitiveness and infrastructure diplomacy. Second, the threat of new entry is weak: factories, cable ships and the know-how to engineer for 25 years of service cannot be assembled overnight, forming a powerful barrier. Third, national-security involvement has become a precondition of competition: submarine cables are strategic infrastructure, and which country's company builds them sways procurement decisions. ASN's nationalization is the symbol of that.

What are ASN's weaknesses and risks?

ASN's biggest risk is the geopolitics that comes with critical infrastructure. Submarine cables are frequent targets of international conflict and sabotage, and laying and maintenance in certain waters depend on the political situation. Because buyers also judge "which country's company should build this" through a security lens, ASN must balance its position as a French and European flagship against its freedom to win orders globally.

Second is post-nationalization management. With the French government holding 80%, commercial judgment and the state's strategic aims will not always align. Freedom to invest and speed of decision-making may be more constrained than at a purely private company. Under Nokia, ASN also went through periods of strain — in 2020 it recorded revenue of 692 million euros and a net loss of 89.1 million euros — so stabilizing profitability remains an ongoing task (Wikipedia).

Third is order volatility. Each submarine cable project is enormous and takes years to build, so results swing with the clustering and gaps between projects. Delays or cancellations of large projects hit factory utilization and fleet utilization directly. Fourth is price competition with Chinese players: HMN Tech and others are going after emerging markets at low prices, and the pricing pressure squeezes margins.

What are ASN's recent moves?

ASN's present is defined by the AI-driven construction boom and post-nationalization capacity expansion. The spread of generative AI has sharply increased demand for high-capacity links between data centers, and investment in new submarine cables is expanding worldwide.

According to TeleGeography, a research firm specializing in telecom data, investment in new submarine cables will reach about 13 billion dollars in 2025-2027, nearly double the level of 2022-2024. Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are the main drivers of this investment, building their own cables as part of their AI infrastructure (CNBC).

To meet this demand, ASN is expanding production capacity. In March 2026, ASN announced it would invest 100 million euros to modernize its Calais and Greenwich factories, raising manufacturing capacity for next-generation cables in preparation for the growing pipeline of hyperscaler projects (ASN / industry).

Structurally, nationalization has strengthened ASN's character as a strategic infrastructure company for France and Europe. Demand for submarine cables linking AI-era data centers around the world will stay strong for the foreseeable future, and the role of ASN — which holds the most upstream position — is only growing. For the full picture of who builds and who owns submarine cables, see also Only four companies in the world can build submarine cables.

Key takeaways

• ASN is the French company that leads the world in manufacturing, laying and maintaining submarine cables, holding the largest share of new builds.
• After passing from Alcatel-Lucent to Nokia ownership, it was nationalized at the end of 2024 when the French state acquired 80% of its shares (enterprise value about 350 million euros, Nokia retaining 20%).
• Its technical strength is the wet plant — cables and repeaters designed and built as one system — backed by a fleet of 7 cable ships and over 800,000 km laid.
• Competition is an oligopoly with SubCom, NEC and China's HMN; new entry is blocked by capital and technology, and national security now frames procurement decisions.
• Risks are geopolitics, post-nationalization management and order volatility; AI demand is set to expand new-cable investment to about 13 billion dollars in 2025-2027.