How To Build a $188M Submarine Cable System

Bevan Slattery writes "PIPE Networks has launched a blog and an online progress report on the construction of its $188M (AU$200M), 6,900-km submarine cable system connecting Sydney (Australia) to Piti (Guam). People can follow the many tasks required to construct a submarine cable and track the project's progress. The daily blog provides unique insight into PPC-1's construction, including for example the different types of cable installed in 'benign' and 'aggressive' seabed conditions."

Comments

Re:Wow

[daveb]

how did you think the bits moved through the tubes - wirelessly? Wireless is really really sucky for huge numbers bits. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of core internet traffic is cable based

Re:Why Guam?

[stryyker]

Perhaps so they can have lower cost bandwidth to the rest of the world and connect to other carriers at Guam?

Re:Wow

[vidarh]

The interesting thing is that while laying underwater cable is pretty costly, for long legs it's very competitive compared to land based cable systems. Europe's connections to South East Asia for example are abysmal. From the UK at least huge chunks of the traffic end up routed the "long way round" over the Atlantic to the US, over land to the west coast and then over the pacific. Trust me when I say that ssh over a connection that takes the long way around from London to Beijing is no fun.

Part of it is of course that for underwater cables you don't have to deal with pesky roads and buildings that people don't appreciate you laying cables over, and digging cable trenches cutting through built up areas is extremely expensive.

Re:Seems Cheap

[m.ducharme]

How many kilometres of cable to you buy at a go?