The Cloud Lives on the Seafloor
Almost every email, video call and bank transfer that crosses an ocean travels as light inside a cable about as wide as a garden hose. This is a map of where those cables run, where they bunch together, and where they break.
of submarine cable in service, enough to wrap the equator ≈37 times. Source: TeleGeography, 2026.
cable systems in service, and 102 more planned (TeleGeography 2026)
landing stations where cables come ashore (2025 map)
of U.S. international capacity travels by satellite
cable faults a year, most from fishing gear and ship anchors
From 131 kilometres to 20,000
The shortest systems hop the Irish Sea. The longest run a third of the way around the planet. Laid end to end, they reach 1.5 million km.
TeleGeography 2026 · IEEE/ETHW · log scale
Ninety-eight words in sixteen hours, then 224 terabits a second
The first transatlantic wire took most of a day to carry one royal greeting. A single modern cable moves about 800,000 times more than the first fibre one did.
History.com · IEEE Milestone · TeleGeography · log scale
A handful of companies now fill most of the glass
In 2012, content and cloud networks used less than a tenth of international bandwidth. By 2024 they used about three-quarters, and satellites remain a rounding error.
TeleGeography 2025–26
Content & cloud share of used bandwidth
How U.S. international capacity travels
Trawlers, not saboteurs
Between 150 and 200 cables fail each year. Most are snagged by fishing gear or dragged anchors in shallow water. Shark bites make headlines, but they barely register in the fault data.
ICPC · split is illustrative of published ranges
Four cuts in the Red Sea
In February 2024, four cables were severed in the southern Red Sea: AAE-1, EIG, Seacom and TGN-Gulf. First reports put the hit at a quarter of Europe–Asia traffic. One operator measured closer to 70%.
RETN 2024 · AP / Fortune 2024
Europe–Asia traffic affected, Feb 2024
An ageing navy of cable ships
Every break needs a specialised ship to grapple the cable up from the seabed and splice it. Much of that fleet is near retirement, and new ships are needed most in Asia, where faults are most common.
TeleGeography & Infra-Analytics for SubOptic, 2025
Follow the copper to the narrow places
- Egypt is the waist of the internet.Europe–Asia cables squeeze through the Red Sea, then cross Egypt overland between Suez and Port Said. Cut four of them and, by one estimate, ≈70% of Europe–Asia traffic stumbles.
- The Atlantic is a bundle; the Pacific is a few long threads.Fourteen systems link North America and Europe over ≈6,000 km. Crossing the Pacific takes 9,000–20,000 km, and hubs like Guam and Hawaii serve as stepping stones.
- Southeast Asia is where cables break.Shallow, busy, heavily fished seas around Malacca, the South China Sea and the Luzon Strait log about half of the world’s faults.
- Almost nothing goes up.Satellites carry 0.37% of U.S. international capacity. The rest goes along the seafloor, by the same route the telegraph pioneered in 1858.
Why it matters: “the cloud” is a physical thing that lies on the seabed, comes ashore at fewer than two thousand beaches, and is repaired by a few dozen ships. Where the map pinches, a single anchor can slow a continent.
Sources & notes
- TeleGeography, Submarine Cable FAQs (2026). >1.5 million km of cable in service; satellites carry 0.37% of U.S. international capacity; ≈200 faults a year on average; cables “as wide as a garden hose”; 25-year design life; Asia America Gateway ≈20,000 km; CeltixConnect 131 km; MAREA 224 Tbps.
- TeleGeography, “How Many Submarine Cables Are There, Anyway?” (2026). 607 in-service systems, 102 planned; 14 in-service trans-Atlantic systems.
- TeleGeography, 2025 Submarine Cable Map. 597 systems and 1,712 landing stations active or under construction.
- International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC). 150–200 faults a year; 70–80% caused by accidental human activity, mainly fishing and anchors; fishing ≈ half of reported faults.
- RETN, “Building the Networks of Tomorrow” (2024), via Telecoms.com & Capacity Media. Feb 2024 Red Sea cuts hit ≈70% of Europe–Asia traffic vs 25% first reported. Cables cut: AAE-1, EIG, Seacom, TGN-Gulf (AP / Fortune, Mar 2024).
- TeleGeography, used international bandwidth / State of the Network (2025). Content & cloud providers ≈ three-quarters of used international bandwidth in 2024; ≥80% on trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific and intra-Asia routes; under 10% in 2012.
- TeleGeography & Infra-Analytics for SubOptic (2025). 15 replacement + 5 additional cable ships needed by 2040, ≈$3B; ≈65% of maintenance vessels reach end-of-life within 15 years; SE Asia & South China Sea ≈ half of global annual faults.
- IEEE Milestone / ETHW: TAT-8 (1988). First trans-oceanic fibre cable: 280 Mbit/s, 40,000 telephone circuits, 5,846 km, retired 2002.
- History.com; Smithsonian (1858 cable). Queen Victoria’s 98-word message took ≈16 hours; the cable worked ≈3 weeks and carried 732 messages.
Notes. The map is schematic: about 20 real systems out of 600+ are drawn on simplified routes, and coastlines are hand-simplified. “37 times around the equator” is our arithmetic (1.5 million km ÷ 40,075 km). “≈800,000×” is 224 Tbps ÷ 280 Mbps. The fault-cause bar is an illustrative split built from ICPC’s published ranges (fishing ≈ half; human activity 70–80% overall), not a measured breakdown.