Billions of dollars to be invested in new submarine internet cables:
Investment in submarine cables could reach $10 billion over the next two years, as telecoms providers and technology companies seek to increase capacity for global data traffic.
Undersea cables were first used in the 19th century to transmit telegrams across oceans and have since provided the foundation for global telephone and internet networks.
[...] TeleGeography's 2022 cable map now indicates 486 cable systems and 1,306 landings globally, with $12 billion worth added in the past five years.
It is predicated that subsea cable spending will increase as hyperscalers shift their position from generating demand to generating supply as mobile data traffic continues to grow and cloud adoption increases.
There are now more than 1.3 million km of submarine cables worldwide.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2022, @10:37PM
Oh Baby Baby!
Oh Baby Baby!
(Score: 4, Funny) by EJ on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:29AM (5 children)
That sounds like a bad idea. Submarines are supposed to be able to travel around untethered.
What's going to happen when one of these submarines goes around an oil platform or offshore wind farm, and the internet cable gets wrapped around them? How will they untangle that mess?
It seems like they should only use wireless Internet for submarines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:25AM
The Moskva isn't going anywhere.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday May 04 2022, @05:16AM (3 children)
Submarines routinely trail long cables behind them, in the form of sonar arrays. Crew have learned to drive about without snagging them, due to their cost.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 04 2022, @09:24AM (2 children)
I think it was a joke.
Submarine = undersea
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday May 06 2022, @05:07AM (1 child)
Hrmph, I started writing a silly reply to that post, then re-wrote it in a serious manner.
What does an underwater whoosh sould like?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday May 06 2022, @08:37AM
Whurgle
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @01:36AM
Cable is always trying to lock you in on two year deals, because you know they'll be jacking that up to $12B once that promotional period ends, the bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @10:41AM (2 children)
Guess we won't have to worry about the environment.
Those cables won't have a carbon cost to manufacture and maintain, no disruption to nature, right?
But hey, the monkeys can now have even more reasons to evolve a physical posture of permanently looking into that little rectangle they stare at all day.
More, More and MOre...we need more data!
Fuck the environment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @11:38AM (1 child)
> permanently looking into that little rectangle they stare at all day.
Hmmm, seems to me that staring into little rectangles is less destructive to the environment than, say, rolling coal. Pick your battles?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 05 2022, @12:26PM
How do you figure that?
Do cloud centers run on Unicorn farts?
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday May 04 2022, @11:45AM (2 children)
I have seen where oil companies have big problems trying to fix deep sea drilling rigs if the problem is too far down.
I wonder how undersea cable is fixed should it be severed in a particularly deep sea bed?
Just playing devil's advocate here. I know there are factions out there making plans on how to create mass panic and bedlam on demand, while also seeing us becoming more and more reliant on an infrastructure that has taken decades to build, yet could be destroyed in hours.
The "civilized" world as I know it today seems far more vulnerable to cascade failure than it ever has been.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 04 2022, @12:28PM
This is about building multiple cables = resilience. Satellite is a mitigation. Provides both "redundancy and diversity".
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04 2022, @05:30PM
If a cable is severed they just pull the ends up and splice it. There are ships that do this full time because cable cuts are common. 200 per year is considered normal.