[Dilbert San Diego]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

[Gen.Blather]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/04/tech/gallery/internet-undersea-cables/

With this and a few air bursts over the United States we’ll all be back in the stone age. (Actually, that would imply a certain level of survival skill. We can’t chip arrow heads or hunt buffalo.)

[chrisser]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

My understanding is that the distance involved is the issue with satellite communications. The information is travelling close to light speed, but having to go up to a satellite and back down introduces a delay that would not exist in the more direct route beneath the ocean.

I could be wrong, however.

[hotsteppa]

I am surprised too.

[Signalman]

Almost all internet traffic is carried via fiber optic cables undersea and over land. A small fraction is carried by satellites and microwave.

[jdege]

I can recommend Arthur Clarke's How the World Was One.

[NYRepublican72]

I’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

You can go that way, but the lag/speed/reliability for satellite internet will really bog you down. It's much faster using fiber optics.

Not to mention, if the weather gets bad, your speed can bog down, just like it does if you are watching Direct TV/Dish during a bad thunderstorm. The residential internet satellite providers have to use accelerator programs to make the net work faster.

[JEDI4S]

Trans-Atlantic?

Okay this has gone too far....now one of our oceans has gone pervert.

This country needs an enema!!!!

[tophat9000]

’m surprised. I really thought much internet and phone communications nowadays went through satellites. I thought the Trans Atlantic cable was so 20th century. I stand corrected.

Yes it the opposite.. fiber optic cable is the modern way..satellite or microwave is old 60's tech and out of date...on a satellite line you have many issues.. just the delay because of the uplink downlink is not acceptable..then interference in free space radio transmission

all modern long data transmission is on a hard line fiber optic cable...and going in the water has many advantage the going across land.....

what you see many time is if you want to lay a fiber optic cable and your on the coastline.. they will just daisy chain along it in the water rather the go across land

I did 7 years of data backbone management for a global data provider.. we had fiber paths circling the world...it was my job to keep the data flowing on all these data paths...knew most all then undersea cables by name like you would know the local roads where you live