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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Thousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Oregon.
The study, presented July 16, 2018 at a meeting of internet network researchers, portrays critical communications infrastructure that could be submerged by rising seas in as soon as 15 years, according to the study's senior author, Paul Barford, a UW-Madison professor of computer science.
"Most of the damage that's going to be done in the next 100 years will be done sooner than later," says Barford, an authority on the "physical internet" -- the buried fiber optic cables, data centers, traffic exchanges and termination points that are the nerve centers, arteries and hubs of the vast global information network. "That surprised us. The expectation was that we'd have 50 years to plan for it. We don't have 50 years."
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(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Saturday July 21 2018, @08:40AM
Undersea cables
Come up on to shore
Look ugly, get in the way, so get buried a few feet down.
Somewhere inland (cost of land vs cost of running cable TO that land) a terminal is built, to connect the country to the cable
Most are, unsurprisingly, relatively close to the coast.
Some are quite close to high tide (note, Fukashima was fine, had they not put the pumps below the maximum water line)
So.. Put it on a mountain, but be prepared to pay LOTS to get the cables all the way up there.
Risk v cost all over again - safer futher up, further inland, but costs a lot more, up front, to put it there.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex