If you find this at all interesting, you have to read Neal Stephenson's classic Wired article about undersea cables - <a href="https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/</a>
Richard Steenbergen regularly gave/gives a presentation called "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Optical" at NANOG:<p>* <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKeZaNwPKPo</a><p>This is fibre optics in general. For long distance stuff (>40km) you want to do a search for "coherent optics". A lot of these long distance fibres have multiple signals going down one glass using different colours ("lambdas") which are (de)muxed; see Dense Wave Division Multiplexing:<p>* <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dum8UXtbN3o" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dum8UXtbN3o</a>
Always impressed by the amount of engineering which goes into the undersea cables and into fiber optic connections in general. One interesting takeaway (at the risk of mentioning an elon company) is that current-gen satellite connectivity will be massively improved by constellations like Starlink, providing a really nice option to disaster zones and places where normal physical connectivity is interrupted.<p>We might even see reduction of dependence on undersea cables in general, which seems good considering the passages on fishing, seafloor disruption, and the whole bit about "uhh yeah <i>sometimes</i> these cables are salvaged..."<p>I am curious about the effects on deep sea marine biology in sensitive areas... most of the ocean floor is desert, but do we have total knowledge about all the places these cables are going through? By fishing activity are we talking about deep sea trawling? The presence of fishing activity implies at least the non-sea-bed areas are in fact not deserted.
> The blackout caused major disruption to aid efforts following the disaster.<p>Speaking to a friend, apparently they currently use expensive international calls to coordinate efforts, limiting them to audio only.<p>In terms of immediate issues, they have been struggling to get enough drinking water to the islands as they usually get it from collection systems on the roofs, which are now contaminated.<p>An internet connection is just one part of the puzzle.
what is the approximate outer diameter of one of those cables? I'm trying to picture in my head how thick the protective layers are, and how large is the joint box
Since last time this article was discussed RE: Starlink<p>> No ground station near by - <a href="https://starlink.sx/" rel="nofollow">https://starlink.sx/</a><p>> No lasers online - <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482424984962101249" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482424984962101249</a><p>Starlink is going to put in a ground station - <a href="https://au.pcmag.com/networking/92316/spacexs-starlink-working-to-provide-internet-access-in-tonga" rel="nofollow">https://au.pcmag.com/networking/92316/spacexs-starlink-worki...</a><p>How the cable might break, obviously the pretty small explosion wouldn't break a cable but it might have been the same probable cause of the tsunami, a landslide (which has a lot of energy) -<p>Insights into submarine geohazards from breaks in subsea telecommunication cables - <a href="https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.40" rel="nofollow">https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2014.40</a>.