This article explores the crucial role of subsea cables in global communication and the economy, highlighting their vulnerability and the potential impact of disruptions.
There’s virtually a 100 per cent chance that the text message you just sent, the show you streamed on Netflix last night, and your Christmas online purchases were all facilitated by subsea cables. Subsea communications cables might be one of the most underrated yet most important parts of the global economy – but they are also among the most vulnerable and open to disruption. The cables are about as thick as garden hoses, and their filaments are about the diameter of a human hair.
They lie deep on the ocean floor and carry an estimated 98 per cent of international data transfers. They transmit more than $US10 trillion ($15.6 trillion) in financial transactions daily, and they are vital to the functioning of the global economy. Australia was forced to finance the Coral Sea Cable, connecting Port Moresby, Honiara and Sydney, to block China's Huawei from building it.Amid an ongoing global digital transformation and explosion in data usage, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of subsea cables has skyrocketed over the past decade, growing from 130 in 2010 to more than 600 today. There are about 1.5 million kilometres of cables globally, but a single cable being severed or damaged can cause chaos, including widespread outages, disruptions to payments systems and flights, and even business closures.Submarine cable networks are critical infrastructure. They carry nearly all the world’s public internet and private network data traffic, facilitating global economic and financial activity as well as government and military communications and operations. Modern submarine cables rely on fibre-optic technology and are far more efficient than satellites, which handle only a small fraction of global data transmission. Lasers on one end of the cable fire at extremely rapid rates down thin glass fibres to receptors at the other end of the cable. These glass fibres are wrapped in layers of plastic, and sometimes steel wire, for protectio
SUBMARINE CABLES INTERNET DATA TRANSMISSION GLOBAL ECONOMY CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
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