Brief History of Submarine Cables

Internet Vs Ocean: the essential wires we never think about
Jay and Mark

Submarine Cable Map

Latex

The little-known tree that revolutionised global communication – BBC REEL
BBC Global

Ask Google Shopping for Gutta Percha and all you get is dental supplies. It comes from trees and sounds a bit like rubber, but it is different. Some notes I collected from Wikipedia articles about Latex, Gutta-Percha and Natural Rubber:

Gutta-percha was difficult to harvest. Only trees that had grown for 35 years or more were economical to harvest. Felling a single tree could yield 12 catties (16 pounds) of gutta-percha; cutting boreholes to harvest gutta-percha from a living tree yielded much less, and often killed the tree anyway due to fungal infection.

Rubber latex is extracted from rubber trees. The economic life of rubber trees in plantations is around 32 years, with up to 7 years being an immature phase and about 25 years of productive phase.

Latex is not to be confused with plant sap; it is a distinct substance, separately produced, and with different functions. The word latex is also used to refer to natural latex rubber, particularly non-vulcanized rubber. Such is the case in products like latex gloves, latex condoms, latex clothing, and balloons.

The latex of many species can be processed to produce many materials.

• Balatá and gutta percha latex contain an inelastic polymer related to rubber.
• Chicle and jelutong tree latex was used in chewing gum.

Gutta-percha . . . is a polymer of isoprene which forms a rubber-like elastomer.

Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, caucho, or caoutchouc, as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds.

Communication Channels

My Wiring 'Closet'

I finally got around to replacing the across-the-floor ethernet cable with one routed across the ceiling and inside the wall. When we started the big remodeling project over a year ago, we moved into the basement and we took our TV with us. The remodeling project was only supposed to last a few months, so it's okay to have a cord running across the floor. I mean, we're in the basement. Actually the only place it ran across the floor was at the bottom of the stairs and we covered it with a rug, so it was practically invisible. But it's been a while, and the TV is still in the basement, so I ran a new cable in a more secure and permanent manner.

The Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon's NBA team, have been having a rough time since all their star players have moved to greener pastures. They're getting better, slowly. They beat the Atlanta Hawks Tuesday night in a nail-biter. Since they are rebuilding the team, they are also trying to rebuild their fan base, which has been decimated since the all-star team they had is no more. To that end, they are now broadcasting all of their games on commercial TV - Charge! 2.2. We have an antennae in the attic, let's see if we can pick it up. Plug the upstairs TV into the coax and bingo! NBA basketball clear as a bell. The antennae is a big old thing that I probably set up 30 years ago. It's not one of these miniature things they are using for their ridiculously high frequency, but it works fine.

Since I was running a new ethernet cable, and since we discovered a new use for coax, I figured I might as well run a new coax cable as well. Plug in the basement TV and run setup to scan for broadcast channels. It found, I dunno, a couple of dozen including the one channel we care about. 

But then I remember that new stuff has been showing up on the ROKU, so I go take a look. One of the new things is TV channels, and there are a bunch of them. ROKU displays a list and I spent a couple of minutes scrolling through it looking for Charge! 2.2. I must have scrolled through a hundred channels. I did not find Charge! 2.2 and I did not find the end. It might be there. Seems as though everybody and their mother that has a broadcast license is making the content available over the internet. I noticed half a dozen news channels from around the country.

There is only one coax cable running to the upstairs TV and no easy way to run ethernet, so now I'm wondering if I can send ethernet signals over the sane wire as the antennae signal. I mean, what frequency domains are we talking about here? Are they even in the same ballpark, or are they in different leagues, playing in different cities, on opposite sides of the country? I have no idea. 

Turns out you can run both broadcast and ethernet signals over the same coax and both signals come through loud and clear. Previous post about the Hitron adapters I used. I am only using one set of signals at a time, so it's possible if you were using both sets of signals simultaneously there might be some interference.

Those stupid screw-type coax connectors are a royal pain. If you hold the cable at the correct angle, the nut screws on easily, but get just a little off center and it jams up. You make or break half a dozen of these connections and your fingertips start complaining. It's basically ridiculous, but it's what I've got. There used to be quick connect coax connectors that just plugged in, no nut screwing required. I think those came with video games, but I don't have any of those connectors and all my coax cables have threaded connectors.

Our country has a zillion video channels all being broadcast simultaneously. YouTube has like a zillion channels, but each of those YouTube channels only put up new stuff intermittently, like once a week. But there are a zillion people watching those channels. How many channels are active at one time? Channels where we have someone broadcasting and somewhat actually watching? Is it a zillion times a zillion times a zillion? Or maybe the cube root of a zillion? If you had access to YouTube statistics you might be able to come up with a number. Of course, YouTube is only one player in the great social media landscape, and all of the traffic that involves an actual person is no doubt dwarfed by the tsunami of bits flowing between machines.

Meanwhile, over in Finland, somebody cut one of their undersea communications cables:

Undersea data cable between two NATO countries breaks 

Excerpt: 

“Disturbances occur from time to time and there can be various reasons,” Bergstrom added. “For example, they are susceptible to the weather and damage caused by shipping.”

Finland’s Security and Intelligence Service (SUPO) told Yle that it was too early to assess the cause of the cable break, noting that around 200 undersea cable breaks happen around the world every year.

“The most common cause of cable breakage is human activity, such as fishing or anchoring,” a SUPO spokesperson said.

Two days later we get this report:

Danish Navy Hunts Down Chinese Ship Suspected Of 'Sabotaging' Baltic Sea Cables

From Michael Every:

So, if you want to worry, look at less glamorous but arguably more significant headlines that don't point to world war, per se, but to world disruption, and major world market volatility.

Official allegations of sabotage were made in the EU as: two of Finland's five nuclear plants had to be shut down; a key Norwegian oilfield was shut by a power outage; the support cable on a Finnish suspension bridge broke; and two key Baltic EU data cables were severed. The Chinese vessel Yi Peng has been flagged as a possible cable culprit and at time of writing was forcibly moored in Denmark. This is likely to prompt a strong Chinese diplomatic response; and perhaps an EU one if it proves a Chinese ship damaged key seafloor infrastructure (again: this also happened to a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia in October 2023).

Cyber Warfare

East Asia Undersea Communication Cables

Zerohedge reports on what could be a more physical kind of Cyber Warfare:

According to Taiwanese authorities, on Feb. 2, a Chinese fishing boat damaged an undersea communications cable that connects Taiwan's main island to Matsu Islands. About one week later, a Chinese cargo ship severed another cable. 

Located approximately 30 miles off the coast of China, the tiny island of Dongyin has quickly established a backup communication system, as reported by the WSJ. The new system uses a high-powered microwave radio to transmit data to Taipei. WSJ described the disruption as a "wartime scenario" and "in a potential preview of a Chinese attack." 

Matsu Islands

Dogyin is one of the Matsu islands. The Matsu islands are tiny and are five to ten miles from the coast of Red China. Taiwan is more like 100 miles from the coast of the mainland.

Here is another post about the proximity of the two Chinas and air attacks.

Submarine Cables:

• Telegeography Submarine Cable Map
• Surfacing
• Post: Cocos Islands
• Post: Surfacing

Cocos Islands

Submarine Cable Map

An animated map of all the submarine cables encircling our globe. This screenshot doesn't capture the pulsing flow of data that the original shows, but it's easy enough to insert in this blog. Embedding the original is beyond my reach today.

I'm looking at this map and I discover something curious. In this view we have Australia at the bottom right and Arabia at the upper left. The white line connecting the two is the Oman-Australia Cable (OAC). Okay, fine, but what's that branch that takes off from the middle of that line heading northeast to the middle of the ocean? What's out there? Some secret military installation? A mad scientist's lair? Nothing so interesting, just the Cocos Islands, another obscure island I had never heard of.

It got it's start in the undersea cable business early:

The islands were annexed by the British Empire in 1857. . . . In 1901 a telegraph cable station was established on Direction Island. Undersea cables went to Rodrigues, Mauritius, Batavia, Java and Fremantle, Western Australia. In 1910 a wireless station was established to communicate with passing ships. The cable station ceased operation in 1966. . . . The Oman Australia Cable, scheduled for 2021, will feature a branch to the Cocos Islands. -Wikipedia

There was a bit of excitement during WW1 during the Battle of Cocos, probably because it was a bit of a communications hub for the British Empire in the Indian Ocean. WW2 was much quieter.

Via Detroit Steve

Previous submarine cable post here. Links to other submarine cable maps here and here.

Surfacing

On our way to Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines
The Wikipedia article about this location doesn't mention anything about submarine communications.

Surfacing

by Nicole Starosielski, Erik Loyer, and Shane Brennan
Design and programming by Erik Loyer

Prototype developed by Craig Dietrich
Additional writing by Jessica Feldman and Anne Pasek

Undersea fiber-optic cables are critical infrastructures that support our global network society. They carry 99% of all transoceanic digital communications, including:

phone calls,
text messages,
email,
websites,
digital images and video,
and even some television.

It is cable systems, not satellites, that transport most of the Internet around the world.

Surfacing is a spectacular interactive map of the world's submarine communications cables, as least the ones in running under the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Zoom in, zoom out, point and click and it tells you about the cables and the nodes.

Some of the information might be a little cryptic.

There are layers upon layers in here. Click on the right items and you get a different kind of map that shows zones instead of cables. Not sure what that is all about.

Réunion

One of the coolest things is that when you zoom out far enough that map distorts to more accurately show relative locations of places, something you don't get with a static map.

Submarine Telecoms Forum also has a map. The view is static and but it does cover the whole world.