Recently, according to newly updated information, the AAG (Asia – America Gateway) undersea fiber optic cable is experiencing problems again and is expected to be fixed on September 3. This is not the first time the AAG cable has encountered problems this year.
The question is, if placing optical cables on the seabed is so easy to break and damage, why don’t people consider the option of placing it on land?
The answer is simple, laying fiber optic cable on land is sometimes even easier to break and damage than when laying it on the seabed .
Laying cables on land is sometimes even more fragile than laying them in the sea.
Construction equipment is one of the factors affecting the quality of terrestrial submarine cables. Meanwhile, for cables under the ocean, there are also many factors that can affect their durability, such as the anchors of ships, sea creatures or even natural disasters under the sea. ocean bed.
Fixing the undersea fiber optic cable is also not an easy task. Still, after about 150 years, humans have found some ways to speed up this process.
Every time a cable has a problem, specialized ships for repair will do the job. If the cable is in shallow water, a robot will be used to reach the cable and bring it up. However, if the cable is located in deep water, the repair ship will use specialized iron hooks to bring the cable to the surface for repair work. To make things simpler, these hooks would sometimes cut the damaged cable in half and the repair boat would lift each end of the cable to fix it on the water.
Determining the exact location of the broken cable is also a challenge for the repair team and sometimes takes a lot of time for this task.
Up to 99% of international data is transmitted by wires at the bottom of the ocean, known as submarine communication cables. Their total length can reach hundreds of thousands of miles and bury thousands of meters on the seabed.
The cables are installed by special vessels called cable layers. It’s not just about untethering with clamps that go into the sea, cables often have to be run over the flat surface of the ocean floor and careful to avoid coral reefs, sunken wrecks and other obstructions.
Cables in shallow water areas are buried on the ocean floor using high-pressure water jets. Although the price per mile of cable varies depending on the total length and destination, installing oversea cable always costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
There is some controversy as to why shark teeth marks appear on submarine cables. Many theories suggest that they respond to the electromagnetic field on the cable. Or simply because they are curious about these stringy entities.
Sharks are the arch-enemies of undersea network cables. (Photo: YouTube).
The problem is that sharks are still biting the cables every day and sometimes damaging them. To fix it, companies like Google are shielding their cables in shark-proof devices.
From 1854, the installation of undersea cables began with the transatlantic telegraph cable connecting Newfoundland and Ireland. Four years later, the first successful transmission was made, but the signal quality was still too weak to be usable. But in that historical context, the time when science and technology was still underdeveloped, this should be considered a milestone of the underground cable industry.
The first communication line was installed 163 years ago. (Photo: Mentalflos).
During the Cold War, the Soviets often transmitted weakly encrypted messages between their two major naval bases and were connected directly by submarine cables within Soviet territorial waters.
The American submarine tries to find these cables and installs a giant telephone line, then returns every month to collect the signals it has recorded from the Soviet cable.
This activity is called IVY BELLS. Today, exploiting undersea communication cables is standard practice for intelligence agencies.
A great advantage of the US is having a team of scientists, engineers, and corporations in the invention and construction of a large part of the global telecommunications infrastructure. Most of the world’s key cables lie on the borders and territorial waters of the United States. This makes eavesdropping easier than ever.
As a result, some countries are rethinking their Internet infrastructure. Brazil is an example. They launched a project to build an underground communication cable to Portugal. Not only avoiding the US territory, this project also excludes US supply and installation companies from the construction list.
Satellite is a future technology, born after fiber optic cable, but it cannot replace this connection. Satellite has problems with transmission speed. Sending and receiving signals to and from space takes more time.
Cable repair costs a lot of time and money. (Photo: Mentalflos).
Meanwhile, researchers have developed optical fibers that can transmit information at 99.7% the speed of light. To see what internet speeds would be like without an undersea cable, visit Antarctica, the only continent without a physical connection to the network.
In this continent, Internet connectivity relies solely on satellites, and bandwidth is high. However, Antarctic research stations are producing more data than they can transmit through space.
The good news is that underground cables have thousands of volts of electricity running through each strand, and cutting this cable is very difficult. However, the sad news is that it was cut. In 2013, in Egypt, a rare event occurred when men in wetsuits were arrested for deliberately cutting the 12,500-mile underground cable connecting Southeast Asia – the Middle East – West Africa – Europe and connecting three continents. Internet speeds in Egypt were crippled by 60% until the line could be repaired.
When an underground cable is damaged, special repair ships are dispatched to the suspect location. If the cable is in shallow water, a robot will be deployed to search for it and pull it to the surface.
Cables located deep on the ocean floor need specialized equipment to be replaced. (Photo: Submarinenews).
If the cable is in water about 2,000 meters deep, a specialized vessel designed to pick up the cable will lift it to the surface and repair it. To make things easier, this device sometimes cuts the damaged cable in half and the repair ship lifts the ends and joins them above the water.
As of 2014, there are 285 communication cables on the ocean floor, and 22 of them are unused. This is called a “black cable”. Underground cables have a lifespan of 25 years.
However, over the past decade, global data consumption has exploded. In 2013, Internet traffic was 5 gigabytes per capita. This number is expected to reach 14 gigabytes per capita in 2018.
This increase will obviously cause capacity problems and the need for more frequent cable upgrades. However, new techniques in phase modulation and terminal improvement (SLTE) have boosted capacity in some places by as much as 8,000%. It helps to solve data needs for the whole world.