Transatlantic communications cable

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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 20th century, all cables installed used optical fiber as well as optical amplifiers, because distances range thousands of kilometers.

Contents

History

When the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858 by Cyrus West Field, it operated for only three weeks; a subsequent attempt in 1866 was more successful. On July 13, 1866 the cable laying ship Great Eastern sailed out of Valentia Island, Ireland and on July 27 landed at Heart's Content in Newfoundland, completing the first lasting connection across the Atlantic. It was active until 1965. [1]

Although a telephone cable was discussed starting in the 1920s, [2] to be practical it needed a number of technological advances which did not arrive until the 1940s.[ citation needed ] Starting in 1927, transatlantic telephone service was radio-based. [3]

TAT-1 (Transatlantic No. 1) was the first transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Gallanach Bay, near Oban, and Clarenville, Newfoundland between 1955 and 1956 by the cable ship Monarch . [4] It was inaugurated on September 25, 1956, initially carrying 36 telephone channels. In the first 24 hours of public service, there were 588 London–U.S. calls and 119 from London to Canada. The capacity of the cable was soon increased to 48 channels. Later, an additional three channels were added by use of C Carrier equipment. Time-assignment speech interpolation (TASI) was implemented on the TAT-1 cable in June 1960 and effectively increased the cable's capacity from 37 (out of 51 available channels) to 72 speech circuits. TAT-1 was finally retired in 1978. Later coaxial cables, installed through the 1970s, used transistors and had higher bandwidth. The Moscow–Washington hotline was initially connected through this system.

Current technology

All cables presently in service use fiber optic technology. Many cables terminate in Newfoundland and Ireland, which lie on the great circle route from London, UK to New York City, US.

There has been a succession of newer transatlantic cable systems. All recent systems have used fiber optic transmission, and a self-healing ring topology. Late in the 20th century, communications satellites lost most of their North Atlantic telephone traffic to these low-cost, high-capacity, low-latency cables. This advantage only increases over time, as tighter cables provide higher bandwidth – the 2012 generation of cables drop the transatlantic latency to under 60 milliseconds, according to Hibernia Atlantic, deploying such a cable that year. [5] [6]

Some new cables are being announced on the South Atlantic: SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) [7] and SAex (South Atlantic Express). [8]

TAT cable routes

The TAT series of cables constitute a large percentage of all North Atlantic cables. All TAT cables are joint ventures between a number of telecommunications companies, e.g. British Telecom. CANTAT cables terminate in Canada rather than in the US.

NameIn serviceTypeInitial channelsFinal channelsWestern endEastern end
TAT-1 1956–1978Galvanic3651 Newfoundland Scotland
TAT-2 1959–1982Galvanic4872 Newfoundland France
TAT-3 1963–1986Galvanic138276 New Jersey England
TAT-4 1965–1987Galvanic138345 New Jersey France
TAT-5 1970–1993Galvanic8452,112 Rhode Island Spain
TAT-6 1976–1994Galvanic4,00010,000 Rhode Island France
TAT-7 1978–1994Galvanic4,00010,500 New Jersey England
TAT-8 1988–2002 Fiber-optic 40,000– New Jersey England, France
TAT-9 1992–2004 Fiber-optic 80,000– New Jersey, Nova Scotia Spain, France, England
TAT-10 1992–2003 Fiber-optic 2 × 565 Mbit/s–USGermany, Netherlands
TAT-11 1993–2003 Fiber-optic 2 × 565 Mbit/s– New Jersey France
TAT-12/13 1996–2008 Fiber-optic 12 × 2.5 Gbit/s–US × 2England, France
TAT-14 2001–2020 Fiber-optic 3.2 Tbit/s– New Jersey × 2England, France, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark
CANTAT-1 1961–1986Galvanic80– Newfoundland Scotland
CANTAT-2 1974–1992Galvanic1,840– Nova Scotia England
CANTAT-3 1994–2010 Fiber-optic 2 × 2.5 Gbit/s Nova Scotia Iceland, Faroe Islands, England, Denmark, Germany
PTAT-1 1989–2004 Fiber-optic 3 × 140 Mbit/s? New Jersey & Bermuda Ireland & England

Private cable routes

There are a number of private non-TAT cables.

Cable nameReady for serviceCable length (km)Nominal capacityLatency (ms)Landing pointsOwner
Gemini (decommissioned)May 1998under 100 msnorth: Charlestown, US-RI; Oxwich Bay, GB-WLS; south: Manasquan, US-NJ; Porthcurno, GB-ENG Vodafone (originally Cable & Wireless)
AC-1 May 199814,301 km120 Gbit/s65 ms [6] Brookhaven, US-NY; Whitesands Bay, GB-ENG; Beverwijk, NL-NH; Sylt, DE-SH Lumen Technologies (originally Global Crossing)
Columbus III December 19999,833 km Hollywood, US-FL; Ponta Delgada (Azores), PT; Carcavelos, PT; Conil de la Frontera, ES-AN; Mazara del Vallo (Sicily), IT various telecom operators
Yellow/AC-2 September 20007,001 km640 Gbit/sunder 100 ms Bellport, US-NY; Bude, GB-ENG Lumen Technologies
Hibernia Atlantic April 200112,200 km320 Gbit/s, upgraded to 10.16 Tbit/s [9] 59 ms [6] Lynn, US-MA; Herring Cove, CA-NS; Dublin, IE-L; Southport, GB-ENG; Coleraine, GB-NIR GTT Communications, Inc. (originally Hibernia Networks)
FLAG Atlantic June 200114,500 kmunder 100 ms Island Park, US-NY; Plerin, FR-BRE; Skewjack, GB-ENG; Northport, US-NY Global Cloud Xchange (Reliance Communications)
Tata TGN-Atlantic June 200113,000 km5.1 Tbit/sunder 100 ms Wall Township, US-NJ; Highbridge, GB-ENG Sold by Tyco to Tata Communications in 2005
Apollo February 200313,000 km3.2 Tbit/sunder 100 ms Manasquan, New Jersey, US-NJ; Lannion, FR-BRE; Bude, GB-ENG; Shirley, US-NY Vodafone (originally Cable & Wireless) [10]
Greenland Connect March 20094,780 km Milton, CA-NL; Aasiaat, GL-QA; Sisimiut, GL-QE; Maniitsoq, GL-QE; Nuuk, GL-SM; Qaqortoq, GL-KU; Landeyjar, IS TELE Greenland
Hibernia Express September 20154,600 km Halifax, CA-NS; Cork, IE-M; Brean, GB-ENG GTT Communications, Inc. (originally Hibernia Networks)
AEConnect (AEC-1)January 20165,522 km4 × 10 Tbit/s (four strand 100 × 100 Gbit/s)54 ms Shirley, US-NY; Killala, IE-C Aqua Comms
MAREA February 20186,600 km160 Tbit/s Virginia Beach, US-VA; Bilbao, ES-PV Facebook (25 %), Microsoft (25 %), Telefónica (50 %)
Midgardsormen Q2 2019 (planned)7,848 km Virginia Beach, US-VA; Blaabjerg, DK; Mo i Rana, NO Midgardsormen
Dunant September 2020 (live)6,400km250 Tbit/s Virginia Beach, US-VA; Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, FR Google [11] [12]
Havfrue, including America Europe Connect-2 (AEC-2) branchDecember 20207,851km108 Tbit/s New Jersey, US; Dublin, RoI; London, UK; Amsterdam, NL; Blaabjerg, DK; Kristiansand, NO AquaCommms, Bulk Infrastructure, Facebook and Google [13]
Grace Hopper September 20226,000km352 Tbit/s New York, US; Bude, UK; Bilbao, Spain Google [14] [15]
Amitié July 20236,600km320 Tbit/s Lynn, Massachusetts, US; Bude, UK; Le Porge, France A consortium comprising Facebook, Microsoft, Aqua Comms, Vodafone (through Cable & Wireless Americas Systems), Orange [16]

South Atlantic cable routes

Cable nameReady for serviceLengthLanding pointsOwner
Atlantis-2 February 20008,500 km Carcavelos, PT; El Médano, ES-CN; Praia, CV; Dakar, SN; Fortaleza, BR-CE; Las Toninas, AR-B various telecom operators
EllaLink Q2 20215,900 km Sines, PT; Fortaleza, BR-CE; Santos, BR-SP Telebras, IslaLink
SACS Q3 20186,165 km Fortaleza, BR-CE; Luanda, AO Angola Cables
SAIL Q4 20185,900 km Fortaleza, BR-CE; Kribi, CM Camtel, China Unicom

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">TAT-1</span> First trans-Atlantic telephone cable

TAT-1 was the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable system. It was laid between Kerrera, 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.

TAT-6 was the sixth transatlantic telephone cable. It was in operation from 1976 to 1994, with a bandwidth of 12MHz between Green Hill and Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, Vendée, (France).

TAT-8 was the 8th transatlantic communications cable and first transatlantic fiber-optic cable, carrying 280 Mbit/s between the United States, United Kingdom and France. It was constructed in 1988 by a consortium of companies led by AT&T Corporation, France Télécom, and British Telecom. AT&T Bell Laboratories developed the technologies used in the cable. The system was made possible by opto-electric-opto regenerators acting as repeaters with advantages over the electrical repeaters of former cables. They were less costly and could be at greater spacing with less need for associated hardware and software. It was able to serve the three countries with a single transatlantic crossing with the use of an innovative branching unit located underwater on the continental shelf off the coast of Great Britain. The cable lands in Tuckerton, New Jersey, USA, Widemouth Bay, England, UK, and Penmarch, France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Submarine communications cable</span> Transoceanic communication line placed on the seabed

A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the seabed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables were laid beginning in the 1850s and 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.

Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) is a broadband telecommunications network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. It has been commonly employed globally by cable television operators since the early 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cable layer</span> Ship type

A cable layer or cable ship is a deep-sea vessel designed and used to lay underwater cables for telecommunications, for electric power transmission, military, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hibernia Networks</span> American telecommunications company

Hibernia Networks, alternately known as Hibernia Atlantic, was a privately held, US-owned provider of telecommunication services. It operated global network routes on self-healing rings in North America, Europe and Asia including submarine communications cable systems in the North Atlantic Ocean which connected Canada, the United States, the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and mainland Europe. Hibernia managed cable landing stations in Dublin, Republic of Ireland; Coleraine, Northern Ireland; Southport, England; Halifax, Canada; Lynn, Massachusetts, United States.

Fiber to the <i>x</i> Broadband network architecture term

Fiber to the x or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic cables are able to carry much more data than copper cables, especially over long distances, copper telephone networks built in the 20th century are being replaced by fiber.

Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range local-area networks (LAN) or wide area networks (WANs), which cross metropolitan and regional areas as well as long-distance national, international and transoceanic networks. It is a form of optical communication that relies on optical amplifiers, lasers or LEDs and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) to transmit large quantities of data, generally across fiber-optic cables. Because it is capable of achieving extremely high bandwidth, it is an enabling technology for the Internet and telecommunication networks that transmit the vast majority of all human and machine-to-machine information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiber-optic communication</span> Transmitting information over optical fiber

Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared or visible light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is preferred over electrical cabling when high bandwidth, long distance, or immunity to electromagnetic interference is required. This type of communication can transmit voice, video, and telemetry through local area networks or across long distances.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telecommunications engineering</span> Engineering science that deals with the recording, transmission, processing and storage of messages

Telecommunications engineering is a subfield of electronics engineering which seeks to design and devise systems of communication at a distance. The work ranges from basic circuit design to strategic mass developments. A telecommunication engineer is responsible for designing and overseeing the installation of telecommunications equipment and facilities, such as complex electronic switching systems, and other plain old telephone service facilities, optical fiber cabling, IP networks, and microwave transmission systems. Telecommunications engineering also overlaps with broadcast engineering.

SHEFA-2 is an undersea communication cable linking the Faroe Islands to mainland Scotland via the Northern Isles. It is named after the route on which it is being deployed (SHEtland-FAroes) and succeeds an earlier cable called SHEFA-1 on the same route.

UK-Belgium 5 was a submarine communications cable linking the United Kingdom and Belgium. It was the first international undersea cable system to use optical fibres rather than coaxial cable.

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha is a British Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic, consisting of the island of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha including Gough Island. Their communications provision includes dedicated radio and television stations, and telecommunications infrastructure.

SAex is a proposed submarine communications cable linking South Africa to the United States with branches to Namibia, Saint Helena, and Brazil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MAREA</span>

MAREA is a 6,605 km long transatlantic communications cable connecting the United States with Spain. Owned and funded by Microsoft and Facebook, but constructed and operated by Telxius, a subsidiary of the Spanish telecom company Telefónica, it is the "highest-capacity submarine cable in the world" with a system design capacity of 200 terabits per second as of 2019.

Hibernia Express is a submarine communications cable system which was privately owned by Hibernia Networks linking Canada, Ireland, and the UK. Hibernia Express is now owned by telecommunications provider GTT Communications, Inc. after their acquisition of Hibernia Networks. At 58.95ms of latency, the cable is currently the lowest latency fiber optic route between the NY4 data center in Secaucus, New Jersey and London.

Grace Hopper is a private transatlantic communications cable that connects the United States of America with the UK (Bude) and Spain (Bilbao). It was announced by Google in 2020 and scheduled to go live in 2022. The US to UK (Bude) leg went live on 27 September 2022.

References

  1. ↑ Guarnieri, M. (March 2014). "The Conquest of the Atlantic". IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 8 (1): 53–55/67. doi:10.1109/MIE.2014.2299492.
  2. ↑ Elmore, Bart. "January 2017: From the Transatlantic Telephone to the iPhone". Origins. Ohio State University. Retrieved May 28, 2021.
  3. ↑ Short-Wave System for Transatlantic Telephony, by Polkinghorn and Schlaack BSTJ, 1935
  4. ↑ "Being First Telephone Cable to Connect Hemispheres". Popular Mechanics, March 1954, p. 114.
  5. ↑ "Building Networks for High-Speed Stock Trading - WSJ.com". Online.wsj.com. October 9, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 "The $300m cable that will save traders milliseconds". The Daily Telegraph. London. September 11, 2011. Archived from the original on September 11, 2011. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
  7. ↑ "Angola Cables to build the world's first submarine cable across the South Atlantic: Press Releases - NEC".
  8. ↑ "16Tbit/s SAEx cable deal signed".
  9. ↑ "Hibernia Offers Cross-Atlantic 40G". Light Reading. August 13, 2009.
  10. ↑ "Submarine Cable Actions Taken PN". FCC. October 4, 2012.
  11. ↑ Sawers, Paul (April 24, 2019). "How Google is building its huge subsea cable infrastructure". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved April 26, 2019.
  12. ↑ Li, Abner (April 5, 2019). "Google's Dunant trans-Atlantic cable will deliver record-breaking capacity w/ first use of SDM tech". 9to5Google . Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2019.
  13. ↑ Tanwen Dawn-Hiscox (January 16, 2018). "Aqua Comms plans Havfrue, transatlantic cable network funded by Facebook, Google". Data Center Dynamics.
  14. ↑ Koley, Vikash (July 28, 2020). "Announcing the Grace Hopper subsea cable, linking the U.S., U.K. and Spain". Google Cloud.
  15. ↑ Lardinois, Frederick (July 28, 2020). "Google is building a new private subsea cable between Europe and the US". TechCrunch.
  16. ↑ "Orange landing the transatlantic Amitié cable". TotalTele. February 8, 2021.
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