Ninety-nine percent of international data is transmitted by wires at the bottom of the ocean called submarine communications cables or under sea fiber cables. In total, they are hundreds of thousands of miles long and can be as deep as Everest Is tall.
The cables are installed by special boats called cable-layers. It’s more than a matter of dropping wires with anvils attached to them—the cables must generally be run across flat surfaces of the ocean floor, and care is taken to avoid coral reefs, sunken ships, fish beds, and other ecological habitats and general obstructions.
The diameter of a shallow water cable is about the same as a soda can, while deep water cables are much thinner—about the size of a Magic Marker.
The size difference is related to simple vulnerability—there’s not much going on 8000 feet below sea level; consequently, there’s less need for galvanized shielding wire. Under sea fiber cables located at shallow depths are buried beneath the ocean floor using high pressure water jets.
Though per-mile prices for installation change depending on total length and destination, running a cable across the ocean invariably costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
It seems like every couple of years, some well-meaning construction worker puts his bulldozer in gear and kills Netflix for the whole continent.
While the ocean is free of construction equipment that might otherwise combine to form Devastator, there are many ongoing aquatic threats to the submarine cables.
Sharks aside, the Internet is ever at risk of being disrupted by boat anchors, trawling by fishing vessels, and natural disasters.
A Toronto-based company has proposed running a cable through the Arctic that connects Tokyo and London.
This was previously considered impossible, but climate change and the melting ice caps have moved the proposal firmly into the doable-but-really-expensive category. See under-sea cable video
