How a subsea cable is repaired

pchristensen•about 5 hours ago

If you havent seen it, you owe it to yoiurself to read Mother Earth, Motherboard: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

A Neal Stephenson long read about undersea cables. So good!

y-curious•about 5 hours ago

About to read but your link is paywalled, here’s a copy: https://efdn.notion.site/Mother-Earth-Mother-Board-WIRED-a8f...

philipallstar•22 minutes ago

> The British involvement, then, was more catalytic than anything else. They didn't own the rubber plantations. They merely bought the rubber on an open market from Chinese brokers who in turn bought it from producers of various ethnicities. The market was just a few square blocks of George Town where British law was enforced, i.e. where businessmen could rely on a few basics like property rights, contracts, and a currency.

In 2026 this is a surprisingly non-pearl clutching take on British influence abroad.

defrost•12 minutes ago

Sure, it's easy enough to write in such a manner.

Two notes of interest, it only covers "British influence abroad" at one specific location for a relatively short interval of time, and it neatly avoids looking too deeply into a classic of British colonialism; the divide and conquer approach of strategically favouring some over others to push any resulting unrest at arms length away from the actual British.

mett36•about 4 hours ago

thank you!

creinhardt•about 4 hours ago

Thanks, I loved this article, time to re-read it again!

For anyone who wants to know more about the early history of undersea cables, I also enjoyed ‘A Thread Across the Ocean’ by John Steele Gordon.

staticshock•about 4 hours ago

I can't believe this article does not mention what I think is the most puzzling part of the repair: the delicate process by which the individual fibers are FUSED TOGETHER in a way that maintains near perfect total internal refraction.

tambre•about 2 hours ago

You mean fusion splicing? That's common knowledge to anyone that's done any professional fibre cabling and you can easily find reading on it. The specifics of subsea cables however are much more elusive so it makes sense the article focuses on that.

lanewinfield•about 2 hours ago

I've been attempting to buy a cross section of one of these cables for a very long time. Anybody got a lead on one?

hallole•about 4 hours ago

This was a good read. I'm obsessed with undersea cables. I consider them one of the wonders of the modern world. Wikipedia says 99% of all internet traffic gets delivered via these ocean-spanning wires, just sitting along the sea floor. Almost unbelievable.

rollulus•about 3 hours ago

Do they maintain the original connection between the fibers or is that not worth the effort and is a swap not a problem?

dewey•about 3 hours ago

Also always interesting: https://www.submarinecablemap.com

pvaldes•about 1 hour ago

If you sink a few old ships around in the area you will never need to repair it again each two years. Extra bonus if they are exactly the same ships that you found red-handed damaging the cables.

gnabgib•about 5 hours ago

(2021)

PoignardAzur•33 minutes ago

tl;dr: They pull the damaged cable up, weld it to a new section of cable their brought, and then drop the cable with a detour to make room for the extra length.

(This is a really meandering article!)

How a subsea cable is repaired

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