2Africa, 2023: 180,000,000,000,000.0 bytes per second
TAT-8, 1988: 280,000,000.0 bytes per second
Atlantic Telegraph, 1858: 0.1 bytes per second
It’s been 165 years since the first shout across the oceans: The submarine cable joining the United States and the U.K. in 1858, via terminals at Newfoundland and Valentia Bay in Ireland, was as thick as a finger and weighed a ton per mile. The inventors coated a core of seven copper wires with waterproof gutta-percha (the dried sap of a Malaysian tree, used then to make golf-balls and piano keys), then wrapped it in hemp and sealed the hemp with tar, and finally covered the whole assemble with iron wire cladding. Two newly designed steam warships, U.S.S. Niagara and HMS Agamemnon, unspooled the wire and met in the middle to splice the wire together. The cable’s first message, a suitably austere 657-character note from the mighty Queen Victoria to the less admiringly-remembered President James Buchanan, arrived on August 16th after a sixteen-hour transmission:
TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, WASHINGTON: The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which The Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States.
The cable broke down in September and wasn’t replaced until after the Civil War. By 1880, though, second-generation copper wires centered on London connected not only the UK, continental Europe and North America, but China, Australia, India, Egypt, South Africa, Singapore, Russia, Japan, and South America. The first trans-Pacific cable, from San Francisco to Honolulu, went live in 1902. The first fiber-optic cable, TAT-8, lit up in 1988; by 2002, the modern ultra-pure glass network had replaced copper entirely.
Seventeen decades after the Queen’s first tweet-like message, 60 specially-designed cable-laying ships are busily unspooling new and more powerful cables at a pace of about three per month. Cable specialists Telegeography report 552 active fiber-optic cables as of mid-2023, together making up about 1.4 million kilometers of wire, and 35 new ones this year. These are about the same size as the 1858 cable – about a finger’s width, and weighing more or less the same, but replacing (a) the chubby copper wires with up to 96 hair’s-width fibers of ultra-pure glass, (b) the electric Morse pulses with modulated laser light, (c) the gutta-percha, hemp, and tar with a silica cladding, and (d) the iron sheath with plastics. A selection of cables lighting up this year:
* 2Africa, circumnavigating Africa from the Mediterranean around the Cape and back up to the Red Sea across 45,000 kilometers, with 48 terminals in 33 countries including Italy, Ghana, Nigeria, Congo, South Africa, the Comoros, Somalia, Pakistan, UAE, etc., is said to be the longest cable in the world. It has a capacity of 180 terabytes of data per second, about a million times the capacity of now-antique TAT-8, and 2 quadrillion times that of the 1858 Atlantic cable.
* FISH (“Fiber Internet Serving Homes in Alaska”), with a more modest length of 276 kilometers, connecting the Alaska mainland with islands.
* Amitie, linking France with Lynn, Massachusetts, across 6,792 kilometers, with a branch to the UK.
* Topaz, a Google cable connecting Vancouver and Japan, length not yet reported to Telegeography.
* Natitua Sud, a 2,680-km wire connecting Tahiti with southern islands in French Polynesia (and building on the earlier Natitua connection to the Marquesas).
Moving from physical infrastructure to daily life, submarine cables are often said to carry about 99 percent of all internet traffic. Telegeography tried to verify this factoid a few years ago and found the last FCC pronunciation on the matter dating to 2013. But they thought it wasn’t a unreasonable guess (though satellite deployment probably brings the share down a bit each year). Whatever the right figure, submarine cables remain the big arteries of the global information economy, carrying most of the $10 trillion in daily currency transactions; most of the U.S.’ $700 billion in annual digitally enabled services exports; and most of the world’s on-line exchanges. The latter includes this email, which has more bytes than Queen Victoria’s message, but by traveling via glass and laser as opposed to copper and electrical pulse took (assuming an average email speed) required not 16 hours but about 1/10th of a second to reach you this afternoon.
Now —
Telegeography’s up-to-date submarine cable map.
The International Cable Protection Committee, a consortium of cable operators and regulators, reports on the world’s 60 operating cable ships.
… and a painting version of HMS Agamemnon, one of the two original cable ships, and as a first-generation steamship a maritime innovator in its own right.
On MOSAIC’s monthly podcast, PPI’s Ed Gresser joins FCC alumna/telecom policy expert Meagan Bolton and Alaska broadband advocate Christine O’Connor to learn about what’s coming next, closing the digital divide as modern civil rights, broadband deployment in Native American communities and more.
Policy —
From the White House, the 61-country Declaration on the Future of the Internet.
… and with the Declaration as a point of departure, Gresser’s look at digital trade policy.
Now and then —
What’s in a fiber-optic cable. The glass, the cladding, the plastics all explained.
The Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers looks back at the first cable’s technical advances, flaws, and lessons.
And the U.K.’s Royal Trust reprints the August 1858 message and its arrival on tickertape. (And a little cheekily defines Buchanan as a “subject”. Obvious response from the left side of the Atlantic: ‘we’re not amused’.)
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
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