In this ISJ exclusive, James Campion, Co-Founder and CEO of TERASi explores the connectivity gap in remote and offshore critical infrastructure.
Can you tell me about TERASi and your job role within the company?
TERASi is a Stockholm-based startup and manufacturer of ultra-compact solutions for the next generation of secure gigabit-speed technology, including 5G and 6G.
Our flagship technology, the RU1, which builds upon our cutting-edge research at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and years of R&D, is the world’s smallest ultra-compact wireless radio with military-grade security, designed for rapid deployment and physically secure communications.
Our mission is to provide defence forces, disaster response teams and critical industries the ability to create secure, high-capacity networks instantaneously, anywhere in the world.
As Co-Founder and CEO, my role is to translate our core 6G and mm-wave research into deployable, real-world products.
That includes shaping our product vision, working with governments and critical industries and ensuring our technology delivers sovereign, secure connectivity that can operate independently of commercial satellites and fixed-network providers.
Why are remote and offshore critical infrastructure assets becoming more vulnerable to theft, sabotage and espionage?
Remote and offshore critical infrastructure assets are becoming increasingly vulnerable as they are both strategically important and inherently difficult to monitor.
Assets are often widely distributed, difficult to access and lack robust perimeter security, making 24/7 oversight and surveillance challenging and leaving them inherently exposed.
In the current geopolitical climate, where espionage and infrastructure sabotage are increasingly used as instruments of coercion and strategic disruption, these gaps in visibility present a significant risk.
Limited or unreliable connectivity further compounds the problem, creating blind spots that allow hostile actors to operate undetected, conduct reconnaissance over time or carry out repeated sabotage without triggering a timely or effective response.
What causes sites with pipelines, subsea cables and offshore energy facilities to be particularly difficult to monitor and protect?
Offshore energy assets face significant monitoring challenges when they rely on satellite links and 4G/5G, largely due to high latency, limited capacity and inadequate bandwidth constraints.
While these technologies can provide basic connectivity solutions in remote environments, they are not designed to support continuous, high-volume data flows.
High-resolution video is critical to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, placing significant demands on network capacity, especially when feeds must be transmitted continuously.
Similarly, real-time surveillance data which underpins AI-driven systems such as SCADA platforms, automatic identification systems (AIS) and specialised IoT sensors and infrared cameras requires low-latency, reliable connectivity to enable effective monitoring.
Together, these data streams place sustained pressure on networks that are unable to deliver the speed, reliability and capacity needed for continuous oversight.
Drones, for example, which are being increasingly adopted to monitor offshore assets, generate terabytes of high-resolution imagery, thermal scans and 3D models.
Processing and analysing this data without high-speed data connection and incorporating it into existing inspection workflows remains a significant hurdle for many operators.
5G and 6G technologies are essential for ensuring surveillance tools, such as drones, receive adequate bandwidth throughout the energy sites, in order to be able to relay the vast amounts of data.
Without reliable, high-capacity connectivity, operators are forced to reduce video quality, delay data transmission or process data locally.
This makes it difficult to transfer the large volumes of data in real-time.
The result is fragmented visibility rather than continuous monitoring, creating significant gaps in situational awareness.
Based on current geopolitical tensions, why are North Sea wind farms increasingly viewed as potential targets for espionage or sabotage?
Based on current geopolitical tensions, North Sea wind farms are increasingly seen as prime targets for sabotage because disruption of these sites can have cascading consequences beyond the immediate location.
An incident offshore can reduce energy output, destabilise the grid and trigger wider disruptions for industries and services that depend on a stable power supply.
Due to the growing strategic importance, ensuring continuous monitoring and protection of these installations has become critical.
Offshore assets rely heavily on monitoring, control and situational-awareness technologies to detect and classify unusual objects or unauthorised activity such as vessel movement around installations.
However, without reliable connectivity to transmit this data effectively, operators are unable to detect intrusions in real-time and consequently lose situational awareness.
Delayed data flows prevent timely detection of intrusions, limiting the ability to respond and protect offshore assets, ultimately putting the continuity of operations at risk.
Can you tell me about the physical attacks that US electricity infrastructure has faced recently?
In the US, we’ve seen a clear rise in physical attacks on electricity infrastructure sites and what’s important to note is how unsophisticated many of these attacks have become, yet how disruptive they can be.
The Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment highlights that substations and grid components are increasingly targeted by violent actors (with a wide range of motivations) using simple, low-tech methods such as small arms fire, vandalism or deliberate equipment damage, rather than advanced tactics.
Why does traditional surveillance and sensors fail to provide effective security without reliable data transmission?
Every effective surveillance system works in four steps: sense, connect, process, respond.
While cameras, sensors and alarms are essential for detecting disruption, they are only as effective as the network carrying their data.
Simply deploying surveillance security measures isn’t enough, surveillance only works if the data can continuously leave the site for analysis and response.
In many critical infrastructure environments, limited bandwidth undermines this process. Operators are often forced to reduce video quality, delay data transmission or rely on isolated, local processing that misses broader threat patterns.
Without secure, high-capacity connectivity, you can’t centralise monitoring, apply advanced AI detection models or respond to disruption in real-time.
In effect, you end up with fragmented information rather than actionable intelligence.
What role can wireless and 6G technologies play in securing critical infrastructure?
Wireless and 6G technologies play a critical role in securing modern infrastructure by removing any constraints imposed by traditional networks.
Physical infrastructure such as fibre-optic cables is not always an option and can be expensive and time consuming to install.
Meanwhile satellite-based communications are often slow to deploy, expensive to extend and vulnerable to third-party control or disruption.
A clear illustration of this risk was seen in 2022, when a cyber-attack using wiper malware targeted the KA-SAT satellite network, which served as a primary communication link for critical infrastructure in Ukraine and across Europe.
The attack not only disrupted communications but resulted in the immediate loss of remote access to more than 5,000 wind turbines, limiting operators’ ability to monitor or control their assets, leaving them vulnerable to third-party disruption.
Against this backdrop, next-generation wireless technologies offer a revolutionary approach to infrastructure security.
Solutions such as the RU1, enable sovereign, high-capacity connectivity that can be deployed rapidly without lengthy planning cycles or expensive physical installations, permitting gigabit-speed connectivity instantaneously.
With sufficient bandwidth and low latency, operators can stream high-resolution video, aggregate large volumes of sensor data and maintain secure backhaul even in remote, high latency or hostile environments.
These high-capacity links support real-time data fusion and centralised AI-driven monitoring, delivering faster, more accurate and more cost-effective threat detection without relying on heavy edge processing.
What is one piece of advice you would give to companies wanting to ensure safety for their critical infrastructure sites and assets in 2026?
If there’s one piece of advice I’d offer, it’s not to underestimate the foundational role that connectivity plays in infrastructure security.
Too often organisations focus on cameras, sensors, alarms and physical hardening, while the communications layer underneath it all is treated as an afterthought.
In practice, this means planning for sovereign, independent communications that doesn’t rely entirely on third-party satellite providers, commercial cellular networks or long fibre cable runs.
Resilience comes from hybrid architectures that combine the permanence of wired infrastructure in locations where it is practical, economical and defensible with secure, rapidly deployable wireless connectivity that can be brought online immediately when an incident occurs or infrastructure is compromised.
Treating connectivity as a core part of security strategies, rather than a supporting detail, is what will separate resilient operators from vulnerable ones in 2026
