2024-09-23 by Wills
Deep sea cables connecting countries to the internet.
Before Google gives your search result it has to travel from your phone, to one of Google data center, and back to your phone. The data about your search result has to travel through many, many, many devices which requires various infrastructure.
But one of the most crucial infrastructure for the internet are the deep sea cables. Without it the internet in USA would be very different to the internet in Japan. It is the piece of infrastructure that made internet a global technology.
As you can imagine deep sea cables are not cheap. While the cables themselves are relatively small (around the width of a soda can) they are costly to manufacture. Installing the cables on the sea bed also requires specific boats and equipments. Furthermore, once the cables reaches the shore, it has to connect to the rest of the internet at a landing point. This facility is costly to build and maintain.
A recent cable commissioned by Japan, the United States, and Australia to connect pacific islands costs a whopping $95 million dollars. With a length 2,250 kilometer, this puts the cables cost at $42,000 dollars per kilometer.
At the end of the day it’s you who pays for the internet infrastructure. When you pay for an internet access to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) you are indirectly paying for the building of deep sea cables.
ISPs are broken into 3 main tiers.