- According to Veronica Pascual, general director of ASTI Tech Group, there are 426 active fiber optic submarine cables on Earth that, in total, measure more than 1,200,000 kilometers.
The first submarine cable was installed in 1856. It was called TAT-1 (Transatlantic Number 1) and it connected the United States with Europe. Its function was the telephone, although it laid the foundations for submarine Internet cables. More than a century later, in 1998, the TAT-8 would be the first fiber optic cable.
After so many years of the installation of the first submarine fiber optic cable, the world has 426 active submarine cables in the world, according to the general director of ASTI Tech Group, Veronica Pascual on Twitter.
The almost half a thousand cables reach a total length of more than 1,200,000 kilometers. Along with this data, Pascual has shared a video, created by developer Tyler Morgan-Wall, Ph.D. in Physics from Johns Hopkins University.
In the video, you can see a 3D graphic of the Earth that shows how the submarine fiber optic cables connect the different continents.
Submarine cables have a useful life of 25 years
The global consumption of data has had a considerable boom in the last decade. While in 2013 Internet traffic was 5 GB per person, in 2020 it was 21 GB. This increase supposes that there is a capacity problem and that the submarine cables will surely have to be updated more frequently, however, the useful life that is currently estimated is 25 years.
In order to prevent undersea cables from breaking any sooner than expected, some companies like Google are putting shark-bite-proof casings on them. In this way, they hope to not have to repair the cables so often, since it is a complicated process.
In particular, for their repair, companies have to resort to special boats. In the event that the cables are placed in shallow water, autonomous robots submerge and drag the cables to the surface. When the cables are deeper, the professionals lower hooks designed to grab them instead of the robots.