Microsoft and Facebook Just Built a 4,000-Mile Cable Across the Pacfic Ocean (popularmechanics.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Popular Mechanics: Microsoft, Facebook and global telecommunication infrastructure company Telxius have completed the Marea subsea cable, the world's most technologically advanced undersea cable. The Marea crosses the Atlantic Ocean over 17,000 feet below the ocean's surface, connecting Virginia Beach with Bilbao, Spain. Over 4,000 miles (6,600 kilometers) long and weighing nearly 10.25 million pounds (4.65 million kilograms), the Marea can transmit up to 160 terabits of data per second, which Microsoft notes is "more than 16 million times faster than the average home internet connection, making it capable of streaming 71 million high-definition videos simultaneously."
The undersea cable -- about 1.5 times the diameter of a garden hose -- contains eight pairs of fiber optic cables encircled by copper, a protective layer of hard plastic, and then waterproof coating. Its 4,000-mile route had to avoid everything from earthquake zones to active volcanoes.

Cables under the Atlantic Ocean carry 55% more data than cables under the Pacific, Microsoft writes, adding that "the project highlights the increasing role of private companies in building the infrastructure of the future."

Comments

Pacfic or Atlantic

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the headline needs to be fixed.

Re:Pacfic or Atlantic

[Tough Love]

It's irritating/embarrassing to see that major blunder just sit there for hours as search engines slurp it up and it embeds itself deeper in the sediment of the internet, to the eternal shame of Slashdot. Either a severe lack of attention by editors, or the code is too broken to allow revising the post? Either way it's a burning issue. Also note the typo in Pacific, as others pointed out. Posted without spell check? Why?

The article is otherwise fine, and confirms what we suspected all along: the internet is made of garden hose, not tubes.

Title wrong

[gringer]

Someone needs to read their own summary: this looks like the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean.

Re:Title wrong

[nukenerd]

Someone needs to read their own summary: this looks like the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific Ocean.

They didn't say it was the Pacific Ocean. They said it was the Pacfic Ocean. Must be a new one - caused by rising sea levels?

Re:WTF? Pacific in the Atlantic???

[thinkwaitfast]

Complaining about the "editors" is 28% of slashdot traffic. What is the incentive to change?

Re:Only 16 strands?

[gweihir]

For technological reasons, this gives the best value. There are also undersea fiber-optic cables with just 4 strands, and two of them are reserve ones. So the 8 pairs seen here are actually pretty high. And yes, it is mostly the amplifiers needed, they cannot get too large or you cannot just put them in the cable. These amplifiers are pretty tricky with laser-pumped Erbium embedded into the fiber.