Satellites get the credit. The work is done by roughly six hundred fiber-optic cables — most no thicker than a garden hose — lying in the mud two to seven kilometres beneath the waves. Here is where they run, where they bunch together, and where they break.
By the U.S. FCC's own accounting, satellites carry just 0.37% of American international capacity. Everything else — video calls, market trades, this page — makes landfall at one of about 1,700 cable landing stations, then dives.
The count is climbing fast. TeleGeography's annual map depicted 232 systems in 2013; the 2025 edition shows 597 systems and 1,712 landings, and by early 2026 the firm tracked more than 600 active and planned cables.
In deep water a cable is about as wide as a garden hose. The fibres inside that actually carry the light are roughly the diameter of a human hair. Near shore, where trawls and anchors live, the armouring gets thick and the cable gets buried.
Shallow water is the dangerous water — that is where anchors and trawls reach. The abyssal plain, by contrast, is quiet: cable is simply laid on the sediment, unburied.
MOST DEEP-OCEAN CABLE RESTS BETWEEN
3,000 AND 5,000 M. META'S PLANNED
PROJECT WATERWORTH IS DESIGNED FOR
ROUTES DOWN TO 7,000 M.
Cables follow the same logic as shipping: the shortest safe line. That funnels dozens of independent systems through a handful of straits — and turns a local accident into an intercontinental one.
Analysts estimate roughly a third of the global internet would be affected if Egypt's cable corridor were simultaneously disrupted.
The strait's 17 cables carry the great majority of Europe–Asia communications traffic.
Eighteen international systems thread the gap between Taiwan and the Philippines — a seismically active one.
The internet breaks under the sea constantly and you rarely notice, because traffic reroutes. The exception is a chokepoint, where there is nowhere else to go.
On 24 February 2024 the AAE-1, EIG and Seacom/TGN-EA systems were severed in the Red Sea near Yemen. The suspected cause: the anchor of the Rubymar, a bulk carrier struck by a missile, dragging as the ship drifted and sank.
EARLY REPORTS PUT THE HIT AT 25% OF ASIA–EUROPE TRAFFIC; CARRIER RETN LATER ARGUED THE TRUE FIGURE WAS FAR HIGHER. ESTIMATES VARY — TREAT BOTH AS ESTIMATES.
Every fault is fixed the same way it was in the telegraph era: a ship sails out, grapples the cable off the bottom, hauls both ends to the surface, splices, and lowers it back. There are not many such ships, and they are old.
FIGURES FROM A 2025 SUBMARINE TELECOMS FORUM / INDUSTRY FLEET REPORT. THE $3BN FIGURE IS A MODELLED PROJECTION, NOT A MEASURED SPEND.
The last five years belong to the hyperscalers. Meta's announced Project Waterworth would exceed the Earth's equatorial circumference in a single system.
45,000 km encircling the African continent, 46 landings, up to 180 Tbps design capacity. Core system completed November 2025.
Announced February 2025: five continents, routes to 7,000 m, enhanced burial through high-risk shallow water.
Widely cited estimate of the financial transactions moving over transoceanic cable each day. Modelled, not metered.
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