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Submarine cables and Internet Availability
By Martin English | February 11, 2008
According to reports, the internet blackout, which left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday Jan 30. Both phone and internet traffic was severely reduced across a huge swath of the region, including India, Egypt and Dubai.
Despite the clean, hi-tech image of the online world, much of the planet remains totally reliant on real-world connections put in place through massive physical effort. The expensive fibre optic cables are laid at great cost in huge lines around the globe, directing traffic backwards and forwards across continents and streaming millions of conversations simultaneously from one country to another. Here’s a link to another submarine cable map, from Telegepgraphy.com.
Topics: Hardware, Technology, Web / Web 2.0, Work | No Comments »
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