What? A Submarine Cloud?

Satellite communication is exciting, and there has been a ton of innovation in space technology over the last decade. Satellite data communications have grown in visibility and importance even more over the past five years as cloud computing has expanded explosively. Today, there are more than 5,000 satellites in orbit. But, you may be surprised to learn that much, much more data moves through physical cables than through space. And a vast amount of that cable data traffic moves under the world's oceans.

According to the global authority on submarine cable networks and cable data, TeleGeography, more than 95% of the world's international internet data traffic moves through more than 485 in-service undersea cables, with another 70 planned. If all the world's submarine cables were laid out end to end, they would extend from the earth to the moon and back, nearly twice!

Satellite data links are expensive, unreliable and suffer from high latency. This is driven mainly by signals having to travel up and down through space. That’s why most international internet data movement is through physical, submarine cables.?In fact, the only continent not connected by submarine cables is Antarctica.

The logistics of submarine cables are fascinating. The following few lines from Mental Floss give a sense of the scale of these cables and a flavor of the engineering involved in building them:

"The diameter of a shallow water cable is about the same as a soda can, while deep water cables are much thinner—about the size of a Magic Marker. The size difference is related to simple vulnerability—there’s not much going on 8000 feet below sea level; consequently, there’s less need for galvanized shielding wire. Cables located at shallow depths are buried beneath the ocean floor using high pressure water jets."

"Submarine cables have a life expectancy of 25 years, during which time they are considered economically viable from a capacity standpoint. But global data consumption has exploded. In 2013, internet traffic was 5 gigabytes per capita. In 2023, Finland has the world’s?highest rate?of data consumption, at nearly 36 gigabytes per month for each broadband subscription in the country."

The next time you work with a large cloud based dataset, think about the underwater journey the data has taken at speeds of up to 99.7% the speed of light to make it into your models.

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