Cutting the Cord

I recently found an article on a new interactive map detailing the location of all undersea cables world-wide. It got me thinking about how dependent we are--even in this age of wireless technology--on actual physical cables to communicate. This is essentially the same way of transporting information since the turn of the last century. The major difference it that instead of voice traffic, now we have data packets running hundreds of miles under the sea.

Old Undersea Telegraph Cable. Outside Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.

The map, which is run and operated by TeleGeography shows you all the various submarine cables and where they are located. One interesting feature is that it allows you to click on an individual cable and see its over all length, the owner and the landing points--cables that are normally run through more than one location, every time they come out of the sea onto land and back into the sea it is considered a landing point. The interesting thing I find is that areas on the map that tend to have the best internet connections and the lowest costs are the ones that have a ton of different landing points and different cables running to them--such as China, Japan, Korea and the general part of Western Europe. Not so surprisingly areas like Africa and Australia, who have slow and costly internet connections, have the least amount of cables run to them.

It is important to understand how dependent we are on the undersea cables because they are similar to the power company--you always expect electricity to be running and don't really think about it until something goes horribly wrong. Back in 2008, commercial fishing boats and cargo ships cut three out of the five of the undersea cables running between the Middle East and Europe, all of which accidentally occurred in the same month. A more recent example is of an 87 year old Albanian woman, who knocked out that country's internet and phone service for five hours, after mistaking a fiber optic cable for a piece of scrap metal and cutting a section out.