(this article was inspired by a recent article in Wired; https://www.wired.co.uk/article/submarine-internet-cables-egypt)
One minute we are a technologically advanced society, able to connect humans and machines from far-reaching parts of the world at light-speed with images, audio, and data.
The next minute, we’re stopped in our tracks and silenced because a thin cable was accidentally (or not?) cut or frayed.
Seems like a very fine line between strength and fragility.
Those network connections we rely on every day — from cell phones and high-speed internet and home wifi — all rely, eventually, on one of the oldest pieces of technology in the world: a cable.
That’s right, a good ol’ fashioned cable. Some as thin as a garden hose. But that’s the present-day solution to transmitting millions of messages around the world every minute of every day. Encoded electrical pulses getting zapped, transmitted, and relayed thousands of miles away to be decoded and displayed to a receiving party (e.g. your kid laying on the couch scrolling through TikTok). Sure there are some networks that rely on satellite and pure wireless solutions but not many. The key word there is “rely”. The tried-and-true cable is as reliable as we can get.
Which brings me back to to the point of fragility.
There are thousands and thousands of miles of cables laying on the floor of the earth’s oceans and seas. Additional cables are on land, just trying to get to the next port where they can be placed underwater again and stretch to the next port.
If you’ve never seen it, check out the site SubmarineCableMap. It’s a map of every underwater cable on earth. It includes information such as cable owner, companies that transmit on it, length, start-and-stop ports, and more. If you’re a map junkie like me, this one is a full-day time sink but totally worth it.
Underwater cables are at risk of getting sliced or frayed by ships (propellors and dropped anchors) and submarines and unmanned exploration vehicles. There’s also natural forces to contend with, such as earthquakes and tidal erosion that can reshape the terrain and throw objects around on the bottom of sea floor.
Above-ground cables can face similar risk from natural forces — storms and tectonic shifts. But at least above-ground cables can be seen and repaired more easily. Who is monitoring every inch of a thousand-mile cable laying at the bottom of the pacific ocean? There is an 11,000 mile cable running from Chongming, China to Nedonna Beach, Oregon that is used by corporate giants such as AT&T, China Telecom, Verizon, and more. Even THEY aren’t looking at every inch of cable every minute. Imagine the potential disruption is that cable gets cut or frayed.
Natural forces are only the beginning of the threats. Sabotage is the leading threat of disruption. Actions sanctioned by countries or even those done independent of official ties put the world at risk of “going dark” and shutting down communications. Of course, many of these large network providers rely on multiple cables and redundancy and don’t have all their eggs in one basket, but there’s still risk of great disruption in the world’s bandwidth if certain major arteries are cut.
And once again transitioning from the sea floor to above ground, there are certain “choke points” where the risk is greatest. Since it would increase the cost dramatically to have to run cables all the way down the bottom of Africa and the bottom of South America, or across the top of Russia and Canada and the Arctic Ocean, we use cut-through points (same as merchant ships) such as the Suez Canal in Egypt and other thin strips of land. These, of course, become massive risk points for sabotage.
Who is monitoring (guarding?) all the cables in Egypt and other spots in the Middle East that ensure communications between Europe and Asia? There are similar threats in other locations as well. Egypt actually (rightfully so) charges “rent” for companies to place their cables on their land. Recently, however, the companies have complained that Egypt is charging “extortionary” prices in order to use their land. Maybe that’s the cost of ensuring safety, or maybe that’s just market value to link one side of the world with the other every day.
It’s fascinating to think that as tech-savvy as we’ve become and as sophisticated our global “wireless” communications are today, we’re still so reliant on the data cable. I’m not sure if Alexander Graham Bell would be pleased or appalled. Modern physics has provided alternate ways of transmitting data via light and radio waves, yet here we are wrapping sophisticated “twisted pair” cables in rugged sheathing and unspooling them thousands of miles across the earth — both underwater and above ground.
I’m sure smart people are weighing the pros and cons of the risk of physical hardware vs. the unreliability of satellite transmission. At some point I suspect there will be a switch. Maybe. That’s for the engineers and physicists to sort out.