Broadband To Hit The South Pole

Albanach writes: "According to this story from the BBC bids are being invited to lay a fibre-optic cable some 1600 kilometres over polar ice, linking researchers at the South Pole with the rest of the planet. Currently, researcher's communications rely upon older satellites that have drifted from their geostationary orbits into ones that are now at least partly visible from the pole. The new cable will be laid on top of the 4km ice cap, and will have to cope with repeated freezing and stretching as the ice moves."

Comments

finally

[tps12]

I guess this means we can expect to hear from Tux more often.

Re:finally

[smcn]

I'm waiting until it gets to the North Pole so Santa will actually recieve my emails.

Challenge

[spencerogden]

This seems like an awefully expensive, challenging way to fix this problem. Are they going to need repeters to stretch fiber that distance?

Re:Challenge

[chill]

Lucent's new optical equipment can push a signal 2000-4000 KM without need for regeneration. Distance depends on speed. It is all DWDM OC-192 multiplex, so the "slow" speed is still ungodly fast.

Yes, this is a shipping product.

Re:Challenge

[barawn]

Actually, I think you misunderstood the satellite issue: they're not using satellites for themselves - they're using satellites that other people put up, and have drifted from their geosynchronous orbits - which is over the equator, and not visible from the pole - into an orbit which is "mostly" geosynchronous, but visible from the pole.

This leads to spotty, poor internet connections (because it's not really geosynchronous, they do move, and they have to be not visible to the pole for some of their orbits) so they need another solution. More satellites would just produce the same current situation, and you definitely don't need to move the old ones back into place - they're working fine currently, but they're just 'spotty', and more importantly, the people who run those satellites probably WANT them in geosync orbit, so they do want to move them back. Fiber's a permanent and cheap solution to this.

what about my house?

[gmr2048]

and i cant get DSL cuz i'm 200' too far from the CO?

Distance

[Pyrosz]

Can you just imagine what your ping time would be while playing Quake? Sheeesh. At least my Athlon wouldnt need the super fan I have on it now, just stick it outside to run. Although I suspect it would melt a hole in the ice! ;)

Re:Distance

[RobertNotBob]

Imagine running into the group of researchers in a quake match.....

Sure, their ping times are all 200, but they are clocking their CPU's to 17GHz and rendering at 64,000 x 32,000! On the bigger maps, they can snipe you from their spawn to yours.

hmmm

[Pig Hogger]

I wonder if the routers will freeze more often. But of course not! They will use Linux, and so will be perfectly at home!

Weird

[Mupp252]

Broadband? South Pole? Internet? Penguins? I know there's some sort of wry humor in there somewhere.

This sounds...

[Idimmu Xul]

cool :)

well, thats just lovely

[cr@ckwhore]

Well, wonderful... we can get broadband to the south pole, but tough luck if you live in Cow's Ass, Montana.

I can hear it now --

[pyramid termite]

"If they can get broadband to the South Pole, why the hell can't we get it where we live?"

.aq top level domain

[Insightfill]

Finally, we'll start getting more .aq sites out there!!

Why not wireless?

[photon317]

It would seem Antartica provides one of the most hostile environments imaginable for wires, especially fragile fiber. Someone may come up with a very novel cabling system that might work, but despite all efforts chances are it will break down in the first year of use because of some onforseen engineering complications.

So... why not go wireless? They seem to only consider satellites as wireless options, but why no ground-based wireless?

Surely for this amount of money one could devices a wireless repeater system to be more stable. Apparently you only have to get the signal about 2000km to Concordia and you're good to go - so why not deploy a wireless repeater station every X kilometers?

There are no obstructions in the path except for snow/ice storms in the air - surely one can find a frequency that deals with this problem well and provides decent bandwidth ver a decent distance right? If you can go 20km at a time it's only 100 repeater stations along the way (or maybe you'd place 2-3 of them 1 km or so apart at each repeat point for redundancy)

Re:Why not wireless?

[mikeplokta]

I thought of this, too. But how are you going to power those wireless repeaters. Solar is a bit of a bust, since it's dark for five or six months of the year. Of course, you could always lay a power cable...

Re:Why not wireless?

[Yarn]

The fragility of fibre is overstated. I have 5 types of fibre on my lab bench, 'bare' single mode fibre. This is fragile, a touch with a razor blade then bending it is how I cut it so I can join it again with the fusion splicer. I also have some jacketed single mode fibre, which is pretty tough, you can cut it with wire cutters though. There's some strange bits of multimode fibre which are about the same as jacketed single mode, but then there's a bit of telecomms fibre. It's tough stuff, I've looped a bit of spare over my chair and I can stand on the loop. I'd test the affect on transmission but my rig has something more important in it currently.

In summary, the glass is fragile, but strong. With a proper coating it is tough and strong.

If we wait

[ericdano]

If we wait a few more years we can do an undersea cable.

This sucks

[Lxy]

If I have a laptop at the SOUTH POLE, I can check my e-mail and read Slashdot. If I'm at home, 20,000 feet from Qwest's CO, I have to use dialup.

Why not just use Iridium?

[Animats]

Iridium is back up and running, covers the entire planet (the satellites are in low polar orbits) and the U.S. Government has a bulk buy deal on Iridium satellite minutes. (DoD now owns part of the system, having bought in after the bankruptcy.)

paper on Antartica's network

[Raiford]

The current network connecting the existing research facilities at the South Pole is quite extensive and lends itself to satallite links. It would seem that another satallite would be the best solution. Check out the article by Raytheon Polar Services which describes the current technology down there.

Not necessarily

[multipartmixed]

Instead of laying the cable in a straight line, you lay it in S-shapes. Big S-shapes. That way, there's LOTS of slack, say 500% slack, for the ice sheet movement.

Of course, you have to use a fairly flexible conduit -- copper piping should do nicely, as long as you can figure out how to make sure it doesn't kink too badly on compression. The S-shapes, again, would help, but a better material would be even better. Maybe copper line with a thick kevlar braid, along the lines of the braid used in a Chinese finger puzzle/trap.

The Canadian Armed Forces has to recalibrate their microwave dishes every eight years or so up north for CFS Alert on Elsmere Island, because the ice moves. That gets expensive in the long run (Snowcats, helicopters, men), and would be MUCH worse for Antarctica.

And finally, finding a break in the fiber wouldn't be too hard, ever heard of a time-delay reflectometer?

Two Towers

[dfenstrate]

Maybe they could just put up two really tall towers, one at each end, and do microwave transmission.
Then, if something ever breaks due to the extreme environment, you'd know where to find the problem.

Now, just how tall would those towers have to be?
Well, if the target station is at 75 degrees, then...
7926 miles (earth diameter)/2 - cos((90-75)/2)*(7926 miles)/2 = 34 miles.

hmmmm... maybe a cable is a better idea after all. Can someone check my math?

Re:Two Towers

[curunir]

As long as you're connecting The Two Towers, why not use a couple palantírs?

Is it still that Barber Pole?

[sharkey]

And does it move? Or has progress killed it off, just like the barber poles here?

Issues Point by Point

[maggard]

1. Satellite

   Lovely solution, just one problem: They don't stay put.

   Sure over the equator they can orbit at the same rate the planet rotates and so appear "fixed" but that only works over that narrow ecliptic. Instead to cover extreme N. & S. latitudes one needs sats on a much more inclined orbit and then they're out of sight much of the time, a dozen or so would be required to provide continuous coverage. That means a couple of expensive launches, a serious of expensive sats, and of course their own-going management (course-corrections, problem resolution, etc.)

2. Radio Repeaters

   Why not build a series of microwave repeaters or such, bring the cable to the shore then broadcast the rest of the way? A couple of reasons:

   1. Putting in place that many repeater stations across the Antarctic would be difficult. They'd need to be tall, durable (in super-cold weather), well-anchored, and able to compensate for slowly moving stations.
   2. Getting back to them to fix any problems would be well nigh impossible much of the year so lots of redundancy, increased complexity, etc.
   3. Where's the power to come from? There isn't any local grid to plug in to and as the Canadians & Siberians will attest running long power lines across extreme latitudes is difficult (no grounding, lots of electromagnetic effects from aural storms, etc.) Solar won't work for a few months a year plus there's the buildup problem, burning hydrocarbons wouldn't be allowed plus would require regular refueling, and radiothermal seems very unlikely.

3. Fiberoptic Cable

   Yes fiber isn't the most robust material on its own. On the other hand it can be clad in all sorts of super-durable materials to protect it.

   To protect from stretching the fiber might be coiled inside an outer cladding so it's 2x or 3x as long as required. Or it could be threaded through an outer cladding (think 'garden hose') so it can slide back and forth under slight tension between 1km "reservoir" loops.

   Of course there's still the problem of powering the repeaters, but then that's why this contract is out there: To get folks interested in solving the problem.

Hmm, what would the Thunderbirds have done?

Re:Fat chance.

[mikeplokta]

The calculation is easy if you assume the station at the south pole is exactly at the axial pole, the earth is a perfect sphere, and the station is on the surface of the sphere. It has to be infinitely deep. Those assumptions are all simplifications, but in fact they're all reasonably accurate.

FINALLY!!!!

[southpolesammy]

However me and the other penguins are probably going to get busted for swapping illegal Whale Song MP3's now....

More info...

[dargaud]

I can provide more information on that project. As a former geek in Antarctica I was recently contacted by the company doing the bidding for this cable where they asked me for more information.

I went to Dome C, now renamed Concordia, twice, in 1997 and 2000 to install some atmospheric physics experiments. I had to lay some cable there. Although it doesn't snow much (at most one mm / day), after 2 months the cables were buried and difficult to remove. We have to use expensive teflon coated cables so they won't break from the cold (-25~-50C in summer and down to -80C in winter, colder than South pole itself).

They want to lay the cable between Concordia and South pole for various reasons: Concordia is a joint French/Italian project that started in 1997 and should be operational for winterover in 2004. The french have lots of experience with ground raids to resupply station from the coast (Dumont d'Urville); while the Americans always fly C-130 to the Pole.

There has never been any land raid between Dome C and South pole, although a woman skied it alone in 1999 (pictures on my site as well). The flow of ice is non-existent at Dome C, for the simple reason that the several 'domes' are local ice summits from which the ice flows. They will certainly run into problems of stretching cables nearer to the pole though.

But from Dome C to where ? Right now the communications are very limited: one email connection a day, expensive NOAA phone calls/fax, Irridium when they are not bankrupt... It would be impossible to lay another cable between DC and the coast for the simple reason that the ice accelerates it's flow and it gets full of crevasses... Maybe a dedicated antenna can reach a geostationary satellite, but that's not the way it works right now.