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How Many Submarine Cables Are There, Anyway?


TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map lately hit a brand new milestone: depicting over 600 cable methods.

As of September 2024, that’s a whopping 532 in-service methods, with one other 77 deliberate.

The variety of cable methods we examine is continually growing. This is because of huge funding on this infrastructure—each alongside main routes and to small islands—in addition to our ongoing efforts to trace world methods in additional element. 

The variety of in-service methods is bigger now than in another 12 months throughout the final 20 years.

What’s included on this rely?

We concentrate on publicly-known communications methods; undersea traces solely devoted to energy transmission, analysis networks, and personal authorities use are excluded. As soon as cables are retired, we take away them from our on-line map.

Final 12 months, I had the possibility to hitch my colleague Greg Bryan on TeleGeography Explains the Web to speak via the cable-tracking course of.

You possibly can take heed to the total episode over right here.

What will we imply by cable methods?

The variety of cable methods we monitor is completely different from the whole point-to-point connections proven on the map.

The variety of cable methods we monitor is completely different from the whole point-to-point connections proven on the map.

Every cable system is uniquely designed to suit its capability necessities and native geography. As such, it might include a number of segments or branches, as do over half of the methods on our map.

The distinction between cable methods and segments is most simply demonstrated within the Atlantic. Though there are solely 13 in-service trans-Atlantic cable methods, 17 segments really cross this route.

That is made doable by methods like Vodafone’s Apollo, which celebrated its twentieth birthday final 12 months. Apollo connects the U.S., France, and the U.Okay. via two parallel paths—one North, the opposite South, and every with their very own pair of touchdown stations.

Apollo Cable

Interactive map followers will probably be acquainted with our month-to-month cable trivia. We lately requested map viewers to ponder the common variety of landings per system on the map. Our winner acknowledged the complexity of subsea system design by accurately guessing not two, not three, however 5!

Together with a recent trivia query, our workforce rolled out some new map options this month. Customers can now:

  • Search by area and route. Navigate to the brand new Area and Route pages by typing Related to [region name] or Related to [route name] within the search discipline.
  • Filter alternatives by a variety of RFS years. A brand new Filter button is accessible within the sidebar on Area, Nation, Touchdown Level, Route, and Provider pages that return an inventory of three or extra cables. 

Head over to submarinecablemap.com to take pleasure in these updates.

 

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