I’m having a hard time finding the right query to use in search engines, and am finding just pages about the basics of telephone service. I live in Michigan in the US. Assume that I were to call France, Zambia, Australia and Japan. How would the connection between these places and me be done? Satellites? A quick Internet search seems to suggest that transoceanic telephone cables still are used to this day. Is this true, and used to a significant extent?
Also, I am going to presume that the same technology for transoceanic phone service today would be the same as Internet communications, as both presumably are using digital technology.
No need to post a long answer here. A few hyperlinks to sites about this is OK.
Lots of big fiber-optic cables strung along the ocean floor. Satelites are not used very often for phone service anymore, since satelite time is expensive and the delay is annoying.
Indeed, the same types of cables are used for both. In some cases, both internet and phone traffic are carried on the same physical connections.
From the UK: Direct dial, with British Telecom, it’s as if they’re in the next room, so I suspect it’s undersea cables. Using a third party low-cost provider often results in a satellite delay - the cheaper option because it’s far more frustrating to use.
Thanks friedo. I had never thought to look into this before. I had suspected that it was transoceanic fiber optic cables, but never thought much about it. However, it occured to me from tracerotes I’ve run on the Internet to other continents that the delay times would be impossible if satellites were used. The speed of light is fast, but not that fast that it wouldn’t be obvious if both paths were through a geosyncronous satellite. Just bouncing a data packet to Australia and back would take over half a second via satellite because of the limitation of the speed of light. While with a telephone call this might be tolerable, on the Internet there’s a lot of data exchanges that amount to asking “did you get what was sent OK, or should I resend before sending more?” This could slow data exchanges to a snail’s pace on the Internet.
I have to figure that transoceanic cables ain’t cheap. Then again, it ain’t like a satellite can be launched into orbit for the cost of a meal at McDonalds. And, these sort of satellites ain’t cheap. It really sucks when a hugely expensive satellite ends up on the ocean floor in pieces when the rocket launching it blows up. This sort of thing happens to more than just US space shuttles.
Here’s a map of undersea fiber and copper cables. Here’s another which specifically says it covers through 2004.
In the late 1990’s and early in the 2000’s there were just swarms of cable-laying ships running around the world’s seas laying this stuff to prepare for the “Thousand percent per year” annual increase in bandwidth use, or whatever the catchphrase was at the time. So now on most routes there is massive excess capacity.
Damn. It actually was worth paying $5 to be able to post here. I never realized how vast the transoceanic cable network was. NOW I can answer that question by a woman from Zambia why it was possible to call Zambia so cheap. It’s excess capacity.
When I was a kid, they had a TV ad that showed how a single fibre optic cable could replace a massive copper cable. Then, I worked in telecom a while, and really understood what they meant, that the digital signal is unbelievably more efficient, and a fibre can transmit so damn much of it.
Considering how much traffic they can put on a cable nowadays, the anachronisticly-sounding practice of laying a cable across the ocean will likely be the most efficient way to do it for a long time (even after the excess bandwidth is used up, if that ever happens).
The light is unaffected by water leaks and radio interference; the downside is that you can only bend them through so much of a radius or the light just bounces around inside the cable instead of travelling down it. Splicing them together takes some care and experience - a lousy joint creates big signal loss.
Well, the birds are not dead yet! In fact, a check indicates that Zambia, despite a relatively healthy telephony infrastructure, still gets most of its voice communications in and out on Intelsat and at least some of its internet over one of the PanamSat birds. Not surprising – Zambia is landlocked and can’t get its own cable landings, and their neighbors are some pretty unstable and poor places. I’d be surprised if much fiber went in or out of there.
Darn, MikeS beat me to it. I second the recommendation of Mother Earth Mother Board. One of the finest articles I’ve ever read in Wired. And written by Neal Stephenson as well.
“Despite some improvements over the last few years, Zambia’s telephone network is still at a very low level of development with approximately 83,100 main lines in operation in 1999 and a telephone density of 0.93 line per hundred population.”
Having telephone service is a rare luxury in Zambia. Per capita GNP is US$: 330, making it one of the most impoverished nations on the planet. However, nothing I can find indicates that for the “wealthy” elite that have telephone service, it isn’t fairly reliable.
Given how impoverished and politically unstable neighboring countries, given that international telephone and Internet access is essential for any country economically today, they’d have to be crazy to solely rely on other neighboring countries for international phone and data connectivity.
However, running a few fiber cables through adjacent countries really isn’t that expensive. Oceanic cable landings could be done through Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Namimbia, or the Dem. Republic of the Congo. While I wouldn’t be surprised that any one or 2 of these countries would become unstable, and Zambia lose the fiber routes through them, this happening to all 5 in a short period of time would seem improbable. And, if that did ever happen, being landlocked would mean Zambia would not be able to engage in international trade. Gotta get all goods into and out of the country via the cooperation of neighbors. IOW, while Zambia would have telephone and Internet access via satellites, basically they would all be trapped within their borders without international trade. This would be a Very Bad Thing.
And, these sort of satellites ain’t cheap. It really sucks when a hugely expensive satellite ends up on the ocean floor in pieces when the rocket launching it blows up. This sort of thing happens to more than just US space shuttles.
