Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...98551.html

EXCERPT: . . . Mauritania was left offline for 48 hours after the African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable was severed, according to infrastructure analysts. Nine other west African nations were affected by outages. The cable system stretches 10,500 miles (17,000 kilometres) from France to South Africa, helping to provide internet connection to 22 countries – mostly on Africa’s west coast. A large part of the west of the continent was affected by outages, first reported on 30 March, after the cable broke near the Mauritanian capital Noukachott. It is thought to have been snapped by a trawler....

MORE: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...98551.html

I never think about undersea cables. I assumed countries got their data from each other by magic. Here's a global map of said cables:

https://www.submarinecablemap.com/

"As of 2006, overseas satellite links accounted for only 1 percent of international traffic, while the remainder was carried by undersea cable. The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when (as noted above) multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break. Also, the total carrying capacity of submarine cables is in the terabits per second, while satellites typically offer only 1000 megabits per second and display higher latency. However, a typical multi-terabit, transoceanic submarine cable system costs several hundred million dollars to construct.

As a result of these cables' cost and usefulness, they are highly valued not only by the corporations building and operating them for profit, but also by national governments. For instance, the Australian government considers its submarine cable systems to be "vital to the national economy". Accordingly, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has created protection zones that restrict activities that could potentially damage cables linking Australia to the rest of the world. The ACMA also regulates all projects to install new submarine cables."----- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_...ions_cable