TAT-1 was the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Oban, Scotland and Clarenville, Newfoundland. Two cables were laid between 1955 and 1956 with one cable for each direction. It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956. The cable was able to carry 35 simultaneous telephone calls. A 36th channel was used to carry up to 22 telegraph lines.
A transatlantic telecommunications cable is a submarine communications cable connecting one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other. In the 19th and early 20th centuries each cable was a single wire. After mid-century, coaxial cable came into use, with amplifiers. Late in the century, all used optical fiber, and most now use optical amplifiers.
A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried telegraphy traffic, establishing the first instant telecommunications links between continents, such as the first transatlantic telegraph cable which became operational on 16 August 1858. Subsequent generations of cables carried telephone traffic, then data communications traffic. Modern cables use optical fiber technology to carry digital data, which includes telephone, Internet and private data traffic.
The XE-class submarines were a series of six midget submarines that were built for the Royal Navy during 1944. They were an improved version of the X class used in the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz.
A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, electric power transmission, or other purposes. Cable ships are distinguished by large cable sheaves for guiding cable over bow or stern or both. Bow sheaves, some very large, were characteristic of all cable ships in the past, but newer ships are tending toward having stern sheaves only, as seen in the photo of CS Cable Innovator at the Port of Astoria on this page. The names of cable ships are often preceded by "C.S." as in CS Long Lines.
A submarine power cable is a transmission cable for carrying electric power below the surface of the water. These are called "submarine" because they usually carry electric power beneath salt water but it is also possible to use submarine power cables beneath fresh water. Examples of the latter exist that connect the mainland with large islands in the St. Lawrence River.
FARICE-1 is a submarine communications cable connecting Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Scotland. The cable has been in use since January 2004 without a fault and is 100% owned by Icelandic shareholders. The cable had an initial design capacity of 720 Gbit/s and is a two fibre pair design. The length of the cable is 1205 km for the direct route between Iceland and Scotland. The cable structure and repeaters were made by Pirelli and the terminal equipment was supplied by TYCO. In the year 2013 the terminal equipment was upgraded by Ciena bringing the total capacity of the submarine cable to 11 Tbit/s. The cable has service access points in Reykjavik and Keflavik Airport as well as in London Telehouse East. The company Farice ehf sells services over the FARICE-1 cable. FARICE-2 was never built. DANICE is the complementary submarine cable.
A cable landing point is the location where a submarine or other underwater cable makes landfall. The term is most often used for the landfall points of submarine telecommunications cables and submarine power cables. The landing will either be direct or via a branch from a main cable using a submarine branching unit. The branch can be many kilometres long.
Apollo is an optical submarine communications cable system crossing the Atlantic Ocean, owned by Apollo Submarine Cable System Ltd. It consists of 2 segments North and South, creating two fully diverse transatlantic paths.
Unity is a Trans-Pacific submarine communications cable between Japan and the United States that was completed in April 2010.
Greenland Connect is a submarine communications cable system that connects Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. The cable contains two fibre pairs specified for 128*10 Gbit/s wavelength each. Initial lit capacity is 1*10 Gbit/s for each fibre pair. Two additional 10 Gbit/s Wavelength were installed in the summer of 2010. The cable has cable landing points at:
The DANICE submarine communications cable system transits 2250 km of the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea to connect Iceland and Denmark. It consists of four fibre pairs, capable of carrying in total up to 34.4 Tbit/s of data using 100Gbit/s coherent wavelength technology available in 2013. The cable went into operation in November 2009 has had no submarine faults. The operator of the cable is Farice ehf. The complementary cable is FARICE-1. DANICE has cable landing points at:
Europe India Gateway (EIG) is a submarine communications cable system to connect the U.K., Portugal, Gibraltar, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and India.
The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) is a 20,000-kilometre (12,000 mi) long submarine communications cable system, connecting South-East Asia with the mainland of the United States, across the Pacific Ocean via Guam and Hawaii.
The ACE submarine communications cable is a cable system along the west coast of Africa between France and South Africa managed by a consortium of 19 operators & administrations headed by Orange. The consortium agreement was signed on June 5, 2010. The cable was manufactured by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and was laid by ships from ASN and France Telecom Marine.
Cable & Wireless Communications Ltd is a British multinational telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom with operations in Pan-America. It was formed when Cable & Wireless plc demerged in 2010 to form two companies.
The Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables is a multilateral treaty that was signed in 1884 in order to protect submarine communications cables that had begun to be laid in the 19th century.
The Submarine Telegraph Company was formed by Jacob and John Watkins Brett to lay the first submarine telegraph cable across the English Channel. This was the first oceanic submarine cable put in service anywhere. An unarmoured cable with gutta-percha insulation was laid in 1850. The recently introduced gutta-percha was the first thermoplastic material available to cable makers and was resistant to seawater. This first cable was a failure and was soon broken by a fishing boat.
The Gutta Percha Company was an English company formed in 1845 to make a variety of products from the recently introduced natural rubber gutta-percha. Unlike other natural rubbers, this material was thermoplastic allowing it to be easily moulded. Nothing else like it was available to manufacturing until well into the twentieth century when synthetic plastics were developed.
