Five billion people will log on to the internet this year, most never stopping to consider that their financial transactions, news updates and chats with friends are thanks to a network of undersea cables.
An estimated 1.4 million kilometers of cables under the oceans deliver internet to every continent except Antarctica, according to TeleGeography, a Washington consulting firm. That’s enough cable to wrap around the equator 35 times.
Most of these cables are no bigger around than a garden hose and transmit data through bundles of fiber-optic cords as thin as a human hair. Information travels as pulses of light, and is powered long distances by electrical devices.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the U.S. works with partner nations and the private sector to build secure undersea cables that deliver reliable internet to people around the world.
An official with Google Cloud, part of Alphabet Incorporated, says that the company is among those that partner with the U.S. government and other nations to deploy undersea cables in “an enormous feat of partnership, physics and engineering.”
Undersea cables bring more people online, spurring learning, trade and development. Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister Manoa Kamikamica says that new cables announced in January to connect Fiji, Guam and French Polynesia will “lead the way for economic transformation through digital connectivity.”
TeleGeography estimates there are 574 active or planned undersea cables carrying the internet around the world. Among undersea cables in the implementation stages are ones that will connect:
- South America and the Indo-Pacific through a project that Google and the government of Chile plan to complete by 2026 called the Humboldt cable.
- People in the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and others to faster, more reliable internet on Google’s Pacific Connect cable network. The project is partially funded by governments including the U.S., Australia and Japan.
- Twelve countries from Singapore to France, thanks to the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable network built by American supplier SubCom of New Hampshire.
“We’re investing in the installation and operation of secure infrastructure to connect every region of the globe,” Blinken said.
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This post was previously published on share.america.gov.
This content is in the Public Domain.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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