As we know it, it works very differently than many imagine. Many users today might think that communications are carried out by satellite or wirelessly, but nothing is further from the truth.
Just so you know, there are thousands of kilometers of submarine cables that allow the connection of communications and what we know today as the Internet. However Why, if technology has advanced so much, do we resort to wiring instead of other innovations?
Does this cabling have a negative ecological impact? You will know the answers to these and other questions in the next post where we will teach you everything you need to know about the network of submarine fiber optic cables that surround the world.
What are submarine Internet cables and what is this infrastructure for?
Basically It is a network of submarine fiber optic cables that connect all the world’s continents in a huge communications network.. These cables have a special coating that keeps them completely insulated from water and protected against deterioration, although they are continuously maintained. More than 90% of these cables have been installed by private companies dedicated to the telecommunications sector.
This being his main investment and a job that began specifically in the 90s in the case of fiber optics., the best technology for data transfer by physical means. From that first cable line thrown into the sea between the United States and the United Kingdom, to the enormous network of more than a million kilometers that surround the entire world and through which more than 90% of Internet traffic passes daily and keep us connected at the speed of light.
Why use cables when we can use satellites or WiFi antennas?
Ideas like Wi-Fi or radio waves seem like something out of futuristic movies, but the reality is that they are more limited than most people think.. The first one is just a transmission medium that depends on a power supply, that is; the Wifi by itself does not provide a connection and requires Ethernet to create one. Whereas satellite is highly dependent on weather conditions and its low bandwidth for the needs of today’s average internet user.
Fiber solves all these problems since it has physical support, it is little affected by the weather, and its bandwidth is considerably greater than that of any technology known up to now.. Also, while it requires more maintenance, it is essentially much more cost effective than other forms of connection. Bandwidth is undoubtedly the main strength of fiber connections, since each of these cables contain pairs of up to 8 wiresbeing the latter capable of transmitting more than 3Tb per second.
What would make each cable can transmit more than 60Tb per second. Numbers that for now are not possible using wave connections. Another reason why fiber has won over satellite is because of the distances that the information travels. Two of the farthest points on the planet are Los Angeles (United States) and Tokyo (Japan), which They are separated by approximately 9,000 km, while the satellites that surround our atmosphere are more than 30,000 kilometers away..
It is speculated that the technology 5G It could completely change this scenario as it would allow much more powerful satellite connections with unlimited bandwidth. However, it is also estimated that even in this scenario, fiber will continue to represent a more profitable alternative that will not be replaced in the short term.. It could take 100 years for us to fully dislodge this connection.
History of submarine cabling What was the first network and how has it evolved until today?
At its birth, telecommunications encountered a great obstacle in the great distances that separated the main cities of the world, making impossible ideas such as an international call. In 1845 the first tests were already being carried out to put the concept of submarine cable into practice.but the lack of a good insulator to protect the wiring from water made the idea impractical.
Fortunately, In 1846 the German Werner Von Siemens created a material called gutta-percha., which turned out to be a perfect insulator to allow the first submarine cable line connecting France and the United Kingdom to be laid out a year later, in this case for telegraphic communications. The following years of this century, installations continued to be carried out throughout Europe, and In 1866 the first transatlantic line connecting Ireland with Newfoundland was drawn..
Regarding Internet networks, the first fiber optic cable was launched in 1996 to connect the United States with the United Kingdom. Since then there have been more than 1 million kilometers of submarine cabling up to now, and projects continue to emerge to make the network more extensive. In total there are more than 300 cables that have been thrown into the sea. Some are relatively short, less than 200 kilometers like the one that connects Japan with Taiwan, but others are extremely long, like the one that connects Los Angeles with Tokyo.
Influence on the quality of the connection. Which are the countries with the most cables?
As we explained to you previously, each of these cables offers a bandwidth of 60Tb. Each one of them arrives at a central that later distributes the connection to the whole country.. Knowing this, it is evident that the number of cables that connect to a central directly influence the quality and speed of the Internet in that geographical area. In this sense, the United States is undoubtedly the country with the most powerful Internet.
In fact, it could be said that it is the “central of the centrals”, since practically all the countries are connected to it. The largest cable complex is the one that connects with Europe and much of the United Kingdom; the second is that it exits from the opposite side to connect them with the Asian continent, and another network that connects most of the LATAM nations with the main world economic power.
The influence of the United States in the network is such that many countries use it as an anchor to connect with other nations with which it does not have direct wiring. For example, there is no cable that connects Mexico with Europe, but with the USA, and this in turn has a fluid connection with the old continent, so thanks to this, Mexicans and Europeans can be in tune.
How are these submarine cables installed? Do they represent any biological risk to the marine ecosystem?
World Map of the Fiber Optic Cable Network
The installation of these cables is easy to understand, but by no means easy to execute. What is done is unroll them in the sea while they are transported by a boat. However, this is a process that cannot be done at full speed, since if any tension is generated between the cable and its starting point, enough force can be generated to break themSo it should be done slowly.
This makes even the shortest stretches time-consuming work, even though technology has come a long way to do everything as quickly as possible. Drawing a line from, for example, Spain to France can take at least 6 months, and if we talk about the United States to Japan it could be more than 2 years. The biggest drawback that engineers find to perform this feat is undoubtedly the depth variations that exist throughout the seabed.
As on the surface, underwater there are mountains and all kinds of hills, creating a terrain with varying depths.. The cable that is deepest is in the Japan Trench, at more than 8,000 meters.
Do they carry any biohazards?
Well unfortunately yes. Many times lines are drawn that pass over reefs and must destroy entire marine ecosystems, which has been discussed many times by organizations such as Greenpeace. In fact, the possibility of removing those cables that are in a dark fiber condition has been discussed on many occasions (networks that are not working) to alleviate the ecological impact.
As for the voltage, the reality is that they are relatively low powers in electrical terms, so there is no possibility that an entire species will be electrocuted if one breaks unless it has direct contact with the cable. Although we remember that fiber optics does not carry electricity but light. However, there are still many complaints about this network, especially debates about whether it should begin to be eradicated with the appearance of 5G that would improve satellite communications.
What happens if one of these cables fails? Could an entire country lose internet connection?
A fault in one of these cables is a serious headache for the companies that have invested in them, since the cost of repair is enormous, but beyond that, there is no direct risk if a pair of cables breaks. or breakdown, since a country does not depend on one or two to be connected. The reality is that a power station in a country can have dozens of cables that reach it. In most cases, a failure of this type would only be noticeable at the connection speed level, and even in this case it would be quite imperceptible.
Next we will see how these cables can be repaired:
how they are repaired
Repairing these cables is impossible underwater, which is why to repair them it is necessary to bring them to the surface. The problem is to find the exact section among the thousands of kilometers of wiring that each line can have. Some methods have been implemented, such as installing cameras along the wiring, but in areas below 1,500 meters deep, light is not very abundant.
In this sense, the biggest challenge is to find the fault, and in successful cases this can take weeks and even months, and sometimes what is done is directly declare the line as inactive and put a new one, another reason why environmental organizations urge you to look for a friendlier alternative to the planet.
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