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from the If-you-laid-all-the-cables-end-to-end dept.
dotdotdot writes:
"All of the fiber-optic cables buried in the sea bed are logged by Washington research firm Telegeography in an interactive Submarine Cable Map. The company's research director Alan Mauldin told CNN about the world's underwater networks."
From the interview:
for international communications, over 99% is delivered by undersea cables.
75% of faults are due to external aggression the majority through human activity such as fishing, and ship's anchors.
There are about 13 cables in service across the Atlantic, and less than 20% of potential capacity is what we call "lit" or in service right now.
cables are designed to last for a minimum 25 years.
Once you build a cable the cost of buying capacity incrementally over time is very affordable.
The last cable across the Pacific cost $300 million; one cable that entered service last year in Asia reaching many locations cost $400 million
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tlezer on Wednesday March 05 2014, @05:57PM
I'm surprised at the low utilization(20%). How does a company choose to dump $300M-$400M into a cable when existing utilization is so low. Opening new markets makes sense, perhaps that's where the activity is happening. Anyone know how the cost per mile of this relates to overland extension of existing services?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday March 05 2014, @06:24PM
How does a company choose to dump $300M-$400M into a cable when existing utilization is so low.
That's easy, the cable belongs to someone else, and they would have to pay the owners to use it. If they can recover the cost of laying a new cable by avoiding fees for X number of years, it all comes down to a simple cost benefit calculation.
If your traffic costs were going to be 100M/Year your payout is in year 5.
Also notice that they don't have the same origination and destinations. So not only do you have to pay traffic costs to use the undersea cable you need to pay traffic costs to get to where you can hop on the cable.
If you are going to lay a cable, you always want to lay way way bigger than you need.
Also the expected life of a cable is way longer than the story quotes these days, as improvements in cable technology are pushing the life expectancy out to 50 years or better on the newer cables.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ls671 on Wednesday March 05 2014, @06:24PM
Because it's about the same price to install a cable with over capacity. In fact, it ends up being much cheaper than doing 5 runs with a cable with lower capacity, especially if you take inflation into consideration.
Everything I write is lies, including this sentence.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by davester666 on Wednesday March 05 2014, @06:33PM
The cable itself is relatively cheap [as in, to add more optic cables to the cable is relatively cheap], so you massively over-provision the cable. But you don't light it all up because then there is a glut of bandwidth so the money you get goes down.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:26PM
I assume you mean at the time of manufacture. For a second there I had an image of someone in Bude, Cornwall feeding a fibre optic cable through the main outer cable, all the way to Tuckerton, New Jersey - much like me when I have to feed the drawstring back into my tracksuit trousers :)
P.S. If the name Bude sounds familiar, that's because it ties in with a fairly significant story from last year [theguardian.com].