Underwater Cables

Communication marvels thousands of leagues under the sea.

Did you know that the first undersea cable was laid in 1851! More than a century and a half of cable driven communication.

That first cable was used for telegraph communication, and spanned the English Channel. Nowadays, there are many more cables sending digital signals across the globe. It’s estimated now that there are 574 active and planned submarine cables, traversing 1.4 million kilometers globally.

That’s an impressive set of numbers, but what good are these cables?

Well, undersea cables are fascinating marvels of human engineering, a woven web of connectivity that spans continents and facilitates global communication.

Behold the new MAREA cable which connects the US to Europe and which is capable of carrying 26 TB/s (terabytes per second.)

How much data is that? Well, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil estimated that the human brain holds around 1.25 terabytes of data. Beyond that, 26 TB/s is the equivalent of sending 52 million photos or 364 hours of movies every second.

Laying undersea cables is no small feat; it's a symphony of engineering prowess and maritime adventure. Massive ships, spools of cables, avoiding anchors and reefs and whatnot.

It’s making us more connected.

It’s pretty good stuff.