Flies on the Wall

The Internet’s Undersea World

Fiber optic cables are how our data is shared globally at the time I type this in 2009. In a series of pulsating lights traveling at the speed of light it is because of this system of cables gently draped along the sea’s floor sometimes miles deep into the great abysses of our planet’s oceans, that our text messages, cell phone calls, even movies shared make there way from a cellphone in San Francisco to a laptop in Shanghai in less than 5 tenths of a second. Each time you generate any form of digital data whether it be words spoken on a cell phone, or pictures uploaded on a computer- that data is distilled and condensed into a pattern of light pulses. These pulses travel along a fiber-optic cables, much like the clicks of Morse Code across a wire but in a far more sophisticated manner. when entering our United States from Asia, 80% of this data enters underneath carefree surfers catching slow-rolling brakes off the shores of San Luis Obispo.  Not to get too politically charged, but following 9/ 11 during the advent of the Patriotic Act (which was a bill passed to allow our US gov the right to tap all digital communication coming into or leaving the country) the main San Luis Obispo line was split and duplicated and the secondary cable routed directly into our government’s mainframe of super-computers. Recently I was able to air out my curiosities with a professional in the Fiber-Optics industry via www.aardvark.com (thank you Joan P. for turning me onto this amazing website). Here’s what I was able to find out:

Me: Does anyone know… if Fiber-optic cables are embedded in the sea floor of the Pacific Ocean or are they layed on top of the sea floor or are they hovering just above it somehow?

Jeremy (fiber optic industry expert): The cables are laid on the bottom of the floor, not dug under the sea bed nor are they floating

Me: thank you, this still seems slightly unfathomable though, how doesn’t it get damaged often?

Jeremy: Actually they (Fiber Optic cables) get damaged quite often, and there is a fleet of vessels responsible for fixing cuts when they occur.  Recently there were widespread outages in the middle east due to multiple simultaneously damaged cables.  There are many redundant cables, so while it’s common for any given cable to be damaged it’s rare that enough of them will be damaged at any given time to cause an outage. Here’s an article about how they repair them:  http://www.slate.com/id/2156987

Allow me to conclude with a little bit of lighthearted conspiracy theory.

In the Beatles song ‘Octopus’ Garden’ written by what most consider the most modest looking and least creative, but least intelligent?) Beatle, Ringo Starr- was it possible that the Octopus’ Garden he sang about was this Government Monitored Global Communication Network on the Seafloor? Proposterous sounding I know, but what about the line:”He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been, in an Octopus’ Garden, in the shade.” Think about it Octopus = many ‘wire-like’ appendeges. In the Shade= dark depths of the ocean. And what about “He’d let us in (allow us unlimited communication), knows where we’ve been… ahhh now you see. Creepy? Listen to this and apply it to the topic discussed and enjoy the cryptic references :^)

Finally, the song immediately following Octopus’ Garden on Abbey Road is called “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)“. This has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter of this post but it the SA-WEETEST Beatles song of all time.

2009 Submarine Cable Map

undersea cable map