# Map of submarine cables



## Colin Parkinson (10 Mar 2016)

A great map and shows just how much "brick and mortar" infrastructure the information age depends on.

http://submarine-cable-map-2015.telegeography.com/


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## cupper (11 Mar 2016)

Interesting that the only undersea cables that come on shore in Canada are at the station in Sambro. I would have expected a similar landing on the west coast.


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## AJFitzpatrick (11 Mar 2016)

There used to be one on Vancouver Island 

originally Bamfield

http://atlantic-cable.com//CableCos/Bamfield/

and then Port Alberni
This Article from 2004 suggests that the station was going to be used again ... but a quick search revealed nothing more on this . 

http://ring.uvic.ca/04dec02/news/neptune.html


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## Kirkhill (11 Mar 2016)

Seems like the UK might be sitting on a fair bit of bandwidth.   I wonder if that counts for anything when bargaining with the EU?

Allo? Allo? Allo?


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## Edward Campbell (12 Mar 2016)

Not my field, but ...

There used to be a lot more submarine cables and they all shared a couple of characteristics:

     + They were (still are) expensive to lay (an attribute that all cables, long and short, aerial, surface, buried and submarine, alike share);

     + They were difficult (some almost impossible) to repair;

     + Their "latency" (lack of that 1/4 second delay thing you get on satellites when your signal has to travel 75,000+ km) is very good;

     + They had a milited (20 year_ish_) life span; and

     + They had (relatively) low bandwidth (capacity).

Newer fibre optic cables are still expensive to lay and hard to repair if they break but they have absolutely _gifuckingnormous_ bandwidths and they have a long(er) lifespan (35-50 years?).

Satellites have eaten into submarine cables profit margins; while they cannot replace them (bandwidth is too low), they can be a lot more flexible - locatable terminals, steerable beams, etc, and they are (relatively) cheap.


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