Anatomy Of An Undersea Cable

The BBC has an excellent graphic of the undersea cables that provide telecom and internet connectivity around the world. A ship has begun repairs on one cable cut last week. No new word on whether the fourth cable was cut or simply hosed due to a power issue (the semi-official line).

The IHT reports that “[u]ndersea cables carry about 95 percent of the world’s telephone and Internet traffic.” Compared to satellite transmissions, information traveling over undersea cable costs less and travels faster.

We’re now getting confirmation that this outage — four cables, three days — is an anomaly. “Flag Telecom has never had two cables down at the same time in the region,” the IHT reports. I’m still looking for data on how often undersea cables have been cut.

Update: more (with cool maps) from Jesse Robbins at O’Reilly Radar

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