Another example of a content provider getting into the submarine cable business is Google, which has funded 13 submarine cables in the last ten years. Recently, Google completed a 6, mile subsea cable linking the coast of California to Chile. Named Curie, after the renowned Scientist Marie Curie, this cable was the first new cable to land in Chile in almost 20 years and is now the largest single data pipe connecting the country.
The growth of the cloud and internet services is driving the need for increased subsea network capacity and the content providers are setting themselves up for the future by investing in high-speed fiber links. Future Undersea Developments Many new fiber optic submarine cables are being installed to connect other parts of the world to the global internet backbone.
Every country wants to participate in the Internet revolution and with exciting new applications emerging such as 5G, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and self-driving cars, the need for higher bandwidth is growing. Acacia will be participating in this event which is a strategic springboard for the global communications industry providing attendees with a three-day platform to focus on planning, networking, and discovering what lies ahead.
Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now. Back to Blog. By Lisa Crewe Posted on January 8, All it takes is a blink of an eye and a push of a button to send an email from the US to Europe, or access a website anywhere around the world.
With respect to electronic espionage, one big advantage held by the United States is the key role its scientists, engineers, and corporations played in inventing and building large parts of the global telecommunications infrastructure. Major lines of data tend to cross into American borders and territorial water, making wiretapping a breeze, relatively speaking. When documents stolen by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden came to light, many countries were outraged to learn the extent to which American spy agencies were intercepting foreign data.
As a result, some countries are reconsidering the infrastructure of the Internet itself. Brazil, for example, has launched a project to build a submarine communications cable to Portugal that not only bypasses the United States entirely, but also specifically excludes U.
Surely satellites would be better than a technology invented before the invention of the telephone—right? As it turns out, no. Or at least, not yet. Though fiber optic cables and communications satellites were both developed in the s , satellites have a two-fold problem: latency and bit loss. Sending and receiving signals to and from space takes time. Meanwhile, researchers have developed optical fibers that can transmit information at For an idea of what the Internet would be like without undersea cables, visit Antarctica, the only continent without a physical connection to the net.
The continent relies on satellites, and bandwidth is at a premium , which is no small problem when one considers the important, data-intensive climate research underway. Today, Antarctic research stations produce more data than they can transmit through space. The bad news is that it is possible, as seen in Egypt in There, just north of Alexandria, men in wetsuits were apprehended having intentionally cut through the South-East-Asia-Middle-East-West-Europe 4 cable, which runs 12, miles and connects three continents.
Internet speeds in Egypt were crippled by 60 percent until the line could be repaired. When a submarine cable is damaged, special repair ships are dispatched. If the cable is located in shallow waters, robots are deployed to grab the cable and haul it to the surface. If the cable is in deep waters feet or greater , the ships lower specially designed grapnels that grab onto the cable and hoist it up for mending.
The cables connect to "landing stations" along the seaboard. Massive cable-laying ships go on voyages to lay the fibre along the ocean floor —plowing across the sea floor to bury the cables. Naturally, their courses are plotted to run along flat seabed as much as possible, avoiding coral reefs and ship wrecks as well the deep trenches or undersea mountains.
Historically, undersea cables were paid for by telecom consortiums. But in recent years, tech companies like Google and Microsoft started getting in on the game, putting big bucks behind the infrastructure that's made the shift to an always connected world possible.
On the inside , they have a core made of layers of fibre and wires covered in a protective layer to keep the ocean out. The cables are are several inches thick when they are near shore -- around the width of a soda can. At the deepest levels of the ocean, they are thinner, around the size of a quarter.
That difference in size is because the cables actually face more threats in shallow waters, including everything from fishing ships to sharks. It's not clear why, but sharks keep biting undersea cables. As far back as , the New York Times reported that sharks had "shown an inexplicable taste for the new fibre-optic cables" that were being strung under the oceans. Fish, including sharks, have a long history of biting cables as identified from teeth embedded in cable sheathings.
Barracuda, shallow- and deep-water sharks and others have been identified as causes of cable failure. Bites tend to penetrate the cable insulation, allowing the power conductor to ground with seawater.
But cable-layers have adapted: The cables Google is helping build feature a kevlar-like protective layer to fend off the toothy sea creatures. Human error is a major factor.
0コメント