I'm surprised at how well connected Australia is. Why is their internet still so expensive?
Submarine Cable Map
21–30 of 114 posts
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#22It's getting kind of dated now, but Neal Stephenson's "Mother Earth Mother Board" is great reading if you're interested in both the history and the process of laying submarine cable: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html
Hacker tourism, in 1996! That's something which I think would be popular now, "Lonely Planet's Hacker Guide to World Travel" detailing hackerspaces, interesting infrastructure tours, 1 or 2 day workshops/courses, low-cost travel and couchsurfing, etc...
It's not exactly what you outline, but The Geek Atlas by John Graham-Cumming lists many places that would fit the description "hacker tourism." It's a travel guide... but it's published by O'Reilly!
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hacker tourism, in 1996! That's something which I think would be popular now, "Lonely Planet's Hacker Guide to World Travel" detailing hackerspaces, interesting infrastructure tours, 1 or 2 day workshops/courses, low-cost travel and couchsurfing, etc...
It's not exactly what you outline, but The Geek Atlas by John Graham-Cumming lists many places that would fit the description "hacker tourism." It's a travel guide... but it's published by O'Reilly! http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596523213.do
A good start, thanks for the link!
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#24I'm surprised at how well connected Australia is. Why is their internet still so expensive?
Perhaps because it costs money to lay cables.
I was talking to an astronomer the other day who mentioned that they're trying to set up a big distributed radio-astronomy rig out in the desert. One of the consequences is that this thing is going to be producing a ton of data - I think he mentioned on the order of petabytes-per-second. So they're trying to work with the Australian government and Telcos to defray the costs by offering the connection as a service, as well. So the cost could drop, soon.
Or it could just be offered as a $300 MEGA-SKYLINK-INTERTRON.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#25Wow, there are two cables running from northern Norway to Longyearbyen, on the island of Svalbard! According to Wikipedia, "Longyearbyen has approximately 2,060 inhabitants (at the end of 2007..." The total population of Svalbard is not much more.
Edit/Add: The cable length is 2,714 km.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, then what happens to outdated cables? Do we pull them up, or do we just turn off a switch at the shore and leave the rest in the ocean? Do the cables contain any substance that might pollute the seabed as the casing degrades away?
Given the high price of copper I would guess that they pull the copper cables out after service. I am not so sure about fiber cables.
Given the cost of such an operation, I don't think you can get some profit even if they were made of gold.
As time passes, most of the cable is buried deeper and deeper under debris that falls on the ocean floor. This means that you cannot just pull it up, you would have to dig to get it out.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#27I found it absolutely fascinating how some continents use underwater cables to connect different locations within a continent (Africa, notably, seems virtually surrounded), while others seem to only have significant outbound connections (North America, Australia).
I can only guess it has more to do with whether you cross national boundaries (since even the US has underwater cables bridging the mainland to Alaska) than land features.
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#28wow...Mercator Projection!
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#29I see no cables actually get routed through the Suez canal, even though many cables come up the Red Sea. The same is true for the Panama canal. Is it because they are too shallow? Maybe too concentrated?
Re: Submarine Cable Map
#30I want to know what optics they are using. On segments that are 7,000 miles long - are there active optic splice boxes along the length of the cable? Or are they using lasers that actually push 7K miles?