Undersea cables crisscross the ocean depths, forming a vital yet often overlooked network that facilitates global communication. Explore this network across four different topics with this interactive map.
This map shows intricate network of undersea communications infrastructure. The foundational data, gathered from Greg's cable map, has been brought to life with additional insights. Explore the oceans on four different topics that have been visualised on the interactive map.
Please note that this map does not reflect the current landscape, data is last updated in 2016, and shows cables active in that year. It serves as a snapshot of the primary cable locations, offering a perspective on the evolution of undersea communication networks.
Explore the map watching the animation or use your mouse to drag and move around.
The capacity of the cable refers to the number of data it can send per second. The amount of data we share online has exponentially grown over the last decade, so one would assume to see a similar distribution as the 'year in service' map. However, this map also reveals which continents are more interested in connecting with each other and which are not. Also, sparsely populated places and small islands tend to have lower-capacity cables.
Combining data from publicly available information like Wikipedia and Submarinecablemap this map presents a detailed view of what continent is responsible for the operation and maintenance of these crucial communication links. Linking a cable to a country was surprisingly difficult to find from publicly available sources. Hence the cables are assigned to continents instead of individual countries. Also, as sometimes the responsibility over the cable is shared among countries.
Historically, during the Cold War, a sizeable number of cables were subject to tapping. This practice continues, exemplified by instances like Russian ships in the North Sea. Beyond espionage, these cables face other threats, including vulnerability to shark attacks and damage during fishing operations.
The cables you see on this map are cables that are actively maintained in 2016. Cables that are no longer maintained, because they broke or because they could no longer keep up with the growing demand for data, are not shown on this map.
The subsea cable sector has seen significant investments over the past decades. While it was initially driven by investments from largely state-owned telecom operators, tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon have also entered the fray. Measured in bandwidth, these companies went from owning around 8% in 2010 to owning more than 50% in 2018.
The publicly available data unfortunately did not have information about which cables are owned by these companies. However, this article by The New York Times has a map that does show which cables these companies own.