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Why Do Undersea Cables Seem To Get Severed In Bunches?
from the fragile-internet dept
There's just something about undersea internet cables that seem to have them get severed in groups. You may recall the various conspiracy theories that cropped up, at the beginning of the year, after four such cables were broken at about the same time, severely limiting internet connectivity in parts of the world. And, today, it seems like a similar situation, with three undersea cables all getting cut in a short period of time. All of the cuts happened in a span of less than 40 minutes, with the first two occurring within five minutes of each other. There was apparently some "seismic" activity right before the cuts, so that's obviously the most likely cause -- but it's going to take a while to fix, and once again we have parts of the world with greatly reduced internet access. Anyway, as with last time, I'll use this as an opportunity to point you to Neal Stephenson's fantastic 1996 article about the laying of the FLAG undersea cables (one of the cut ones is a FLAG cable). Consider it weekend reading, and be warned that it may take the entire weekend to read (but it's worth it).
