Submarine cables power the internet, but what happens when one breaks?
Earlier this month, some people in Northern Ireland started seeing their broadband speeds slow right down.
How come? Well it turns out that an undersea fibre optic cable that supplies Northern Ireland with Virgin Media's broadband had broken. Fixing it would involve a crack team of specialist engineers, a boat and a robot.
97% of the world’s communications are carried by underwater cables. There are 277 globally, more than 20 of which connect to the UK. This is how they get laid:
Unfortunately, they can easily be torn by earthquakes, ships' anchors or trawler nets used in fishing.
When that happens, they need repairing. Quickly.
That's where Peter Jamieson comes in. He's the lead engineer at Virgin Media and will be the first to be alerted when there’s a problem with one of the company’s two fibre optic cables in the Irish Sea.
If there's ever a breakage - and there have been two for the company in 7 years - the signal between the two ends of the cable will be disrupted, triggering an alarm.
"We’ll send out an engineer to both ends of the cable within about 30 minutes," says Jamieson. The engineer will carry out tests that will reveal the distance along the cable where the tear is.
"Then I call out a repair ship, which mobilises in about an hour," he says.
"Every cable damaged is an emergency, so we’ll try to fix it as quickly as we can."
In this case, the ship called was the 100m-long Pierre de Fermat - which is shared by a consortium of companies that rely on undersea cables.
.gif)
Post a Comment