AT&T Archives: Submarine Cable Systems Development

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A film from 1958 about the future of broadband submarine cable systems. Emphasis is on the mechanical aspects of cable, repeater, and shipboard machinery development. The need for continuing development work on future broadband cable systems is outlined. The complexity of the project is described and its diverse nature is indicated by the fact that information from the fields of oceanography and microbiological corrosion must be integrated with many types of engineering work on the project.
The work of the engineer is described as it pertains to experimental design and manufacture of future cable, and the development of submarine amplifiers and repeaters. The film shows the use of full-scale mockups for simulating cable laying operations in order to study methods for stowing and handling rigid repeaters and cable, and the use of scale models to develop the stowage facilities and cable handling machinery for future cable ships. Finally, the exploratory work on the plan and design of a cable ship is profiled.
In 1958, Cable technology had been around for 90 years, but still was in its relative infancy. AT&T had made significant improvements to the technology by incorporating coaxial cable, polyethylene insulation, and vacuum tube repeaters (soon to be transistorized), and through these developments had laid the first transoceanic cable, TAT-1, in 1956. TAT-1 could only carry 36 calls at a time, but also contained a Moscow to Washington DC hotline.
In 1983, fiber optic cables were being developed. By 1988 AT&T was able to lay TAT-8, the first fiber-optic transoceanic cable. It could carry 36,000 calls at a time.
Today the world is encircled by cables, in an ever-increasing net laid above and underground, and under the sea. As of this writing (2011), there are at least 15 undersea cable projects in process around the world, slated to be completed by 2013.
Intended Audience: student groups at science and tech colleges
Producer: Audio Productions, Inc.
Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

[@LMacNeill]

I wish there had been some way to keep Bell Labs around after AT&T was broken up in 1983... There's just not anything like it in existence today -- a *giant* (yet privately-owned) facility, with almost unlimited resources, that engages in pure research simply for the sake of research. There is *so much* of our technology today that is *directly* related to discoveries made at Bell Labs.

[@americanspirit8932]

Go ahead is still part of the AT&T network is called milky that's the name of the company now and they are definitely part of the Bell System still I'm a retired AT&T engineer at the 36 years of service

[@nonenowherebye]

The answer is to increase corporate income tax rates. As taxes are only applied to net profits, this incentivizes corporations to invest more on research, expansion, and employees. Reducing these taxes only encourages them to hoard more and more money.

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

LMacNeill: So true! On this point alone Judge Greene has a LOT to answer for... I happen to be an electronics/electrical/computer engineer who worked for the Canadian National Research Council for many years so I know very well what developments came out of Bell Labs that have had had a huge impact on how our world is today. Some years ago (late 80s) I had a friend (physicist) who worked at the Bell Labs at Murray Hill. I manage to get personally guided tour which was very interesting. I was not, however, prepared for the emotional impact of actually being in the place where so many thousand research programs took place that had such astounding results. But wait! There's MORE! Compared to before Judge Greene ordered the breakup of AT&T the technical standard of telephone service today is pathetic! Dropped calls, failure to connect at all with no valid reason, system background noises and digital artefacts, muffled voices, the list goes on... I think the reason for this is that in the pursuit of maximum profit system margins have been shaved so thin that the least disturbance in signal quality results in a serious degradation in voice quality. As an electronics engineer, if I designed a system for wide public use that worked this badly I'd be ashamed of myself! Widespread telecommunications is the perfect place for a well regulated monopoly that can enforce high technical standards at a reasonable price without worrying about exacting maximum profit from the customers. Also, if you think getting phone calls from scammers several times per week is bad, you should investigate the scams all these independent phone companies pull on each other to try and maximise their profits! There would be no point in doing this in a well regulated monopoly.

[@stargazer7644]

Bell labs survived for a long time after the breakup of the baby bells.

[@KingThrillgore]

Bell Labs is now part of Nokia.

[@joelarmenta9638]

These people are the real fathers of modern telecommunications. Thank you for your contribution to the betterment of humanity

[@Thewestcoastshooter]

@ scumbag

[@TheWyrdSmythe]

It’s the amount of detail that impresses me.

[@abraarrather9823]

Proud to be a part of AT&T❤️

[@TheAnubis57]

Why is this short more entertaining than today's (2019) television which is slowly becoming mindless. BTW, I'd like to see design and building of the machinery that went into making the cable and testing them.

[@johnbattista9519]

TheAnubis57 , TV became mindless starting back in the late 80’s...

[@skyking6989]

I quit watching TV 10+years ago

[@jasonmurdoch9936]

I love watching videos like this that show how stuff is made and how it's put together very entertaining

[@alexanderc5312]

I vibe so hard with these types of videos

[@comeradecoyote]

Can we get higher resolution scans of these in the near future. I’m sure that these pulled up on 4K would still hold up well

[@Arabhacks]

Early coaxial cable topped off at around 20 MHz in the 1920s, when the technology was very new. Carrier telephone with open wire was at that upper limit and coaxial cable was invented to solve problem of the line radiating. By the start of the second world war 200 MHz circuits were in use. After the war it was microwave radio links. Now it is fiber optic cable. But 500 MHz cables do work, very common in cable TV.

[@LMB222]

More than 500MHz. My cable modem reports frequencies up to 960MHz.

[@V8Power5300]

This was really cool to see. Especially after watching the film about the CS Longlines cable laying ship. They use all the things developed in this video

[@deepbludude4697]

I worked for RCA and Pan AM in the 80s was a Sub-cable diver with PanAm we kept subcables that had been laid in the 50s still working well into the 80s all underwater, except the shore-end and terminations.

[@titaniumdiveknife]

Gorgeous repeaters & happy engineers.

[@mikefromflorida8357]

Much better than the new productions of information.

[@ExploringCabinsandMines]

Is this guys voice on every old documentary? who is he?

[@torquemada1971]

It's the style of speaking back in the days of 2 pack-a-day smoking habits and engineers wearing suits and hats.

[@kc2dhu]

@@torquemada1971 carbon microphone. Everyone sounds the same. :)

[@VideoNOLA]

Here's why... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

[@charlesshivoder2887]

Colorado Strong Hello from Pennsylvania. Up until John Kennedy’s refusal to wear a businessman’s felt hat in the 1960’s, all AT&T management personnel were expected to wear a suit, white shirt and tie, leather shoes, and a hat when representing the company to the public and to customers. This was an immutable rule. I know, I was there at that time. CAS.

[@hardlyb]

@@charlesshivoder2887 I knew people who worked at Bell Labs in the 70's, and they had what seemed to me to be exhaustive rules about office furniture. But at least they got offices, unlike much of modern SV, where everyone works in one big, noisy room.

[@AnthonyHandcock]

"Capable of handling 100 or more channels". Bless :-D

[@Leonelf0]

Is there information regarding twisting of the cable when unwinding? For me, it would seem like the cable is torsioned when unwinding...

[@Aor87]

Not if rolled correctly. If you put a half twist in a cable as you roll it up, you can lay the coil flat on the floor and lift one end upwards without a resulting twist in the cable. It's called 'reverse rolling' a cable, well, that's what it's called where I'm from anyway... This is often an issue when buying a drum of cable. As these have been rolled directly onto the drum (presumably by machine), so the correct way to unroll these is to either put a stick or pole through the centre of the drum and pull the cable out, allowing the drum to rotate, or to roll the drum along the ground, laying the cable as you go. If you have a drum of cable and you put it on its side on the ground (so it cannot rotate) and then lift the cable upwards, off the side of the drum, it will have a twist in it as you pull out. This will ruin light signal cables if you are not careful.

[@user-kn6vw4sr2r]

Our ancestors trying to give us a comfortable and connected world

[@SillyPutty3700]

While I recognize the need to break up MA Bell back in the 80s the resulting loss of Bell labs to R&D was an incalculable loss to the technological, financial and military strength of the US.

[@hardlyb]

It's not like the people working there vanished - they still did stuff. And if Ma Bell had been around, we probably would still not have the Internet or cell phones.

[@hardlyb]

@@01harvey Well, there was at least a need end AT&T being protected by the FCC from competition. And I'm not sure that breaking up Google is the right way to fix the problem they pose.

[@jed-henrywitkowski6470]

Please elaborate.

[@phonedave]

The Bell Companies were a monopoly. They were under what is called rate of return regulation. They were allowed to charge enough money to make a certain return on their expenditures. Because of this, they could afford to spend money on projects that might not work out because they were guaranteed to still make money. This allowed Bell Labs to conduct research in areas where the business case was not 100% clear. They invented a lot of things with the attitude of "let's see what we can do, and we might find a way to sell it later". That sort of well funded general research facility no longer exists.

[@cooldudicus7668]

@@hardlyb Ma Bell pioneered cell phone technology. Get your facts straight. The first cell phones were installed in cars in the 1970s in Chicago. That was pre Ma Bell breakup. If you watch the old tv shows, you will see people using car phones. It was a big deal back then.

[@whiteclifffl]

Men in ties building stuff.

[@captainmikehagen459]

There’s nothing better

[@johnhornblow4347]

Imagine being in the lab, even developing your own tape deck decades before the cassette tape..

[@avgfree21]

i wonder if the original heavy cable from the 19th century that spanned the atlantic still exists even though long LONG since decommissioned

[@andrewmetcalf1059]

Yes, we run into it all the time. When installing a new cable the old ones are pulled up and cut to clear a path. There are many examples around the internet of old telegraph cables. In many cases they are in good shape.

[@boris2342]

Jaws 2 ate it and blew up ... Remember

[@blip1]

@@boris2342 LMAO

[@garyreeves7533]

1000's of km are recovered every year and recycled. The TAT-2 cable shown here in development has all pretty much been picked up and turned into chipped up copper and polyethylene.

[@deepbludude4697]

When I worked on Ascension Island one of the first cables from the mid 1800's laid from a sailing ship no less, from UK to S.Africa. The Comfortless cove landing was still working that was 1983. The BBC subcable tech and I would drink beers he showed me they used it too Cornwall with a telegraph key from Ascension Gtown key office it blew my mind back then.

[@jimmyhuesandthehouserocker1069]

It's a shame of how so much of this technology is obsolete today

[@firewalker1372]

Yes it is, but if it wasn’t for this now obsolete technology. We probably wouldn’t have all the tech we have today. Amazing stuff.

[@pauldormont4470]

@@firewalker1372 Stepping stones in advancing science

[@ernststavroblofeld1961]

AT&T - Where did you put the taps for the NSA?

[@user2C47]

Taps are applied to individual subscriber lines at the MDF.

[@ernststavroblofeld1961]

@@user2C47 - Pfffttthahaha! You can tell that to Room 641A.

[@user2C47]

@@ernststavroblofeld1961 Did 641A get the security update?

[@jasonmurdoch9936]

They mentioned the word broadband several times in this video but boy they have no idea what broadband is today compared to what it was back then

[@Random_How-tos]

Honestly, in general I feel like people from the 50s and 60s explain confusing stuff a lot better than they do today.

[@bertroost1675]

I wonder what electron tube designation number he's talking about at 10:50? Anyone know what it is?

[@Arabhacks]

What was the frequency range of this coaxial cable? Was this full duplex or were a pair of cables required?

[@davidluiz1822]

@@IUSSHistory It is not duplex. The repeaters were unidirectional and hence why two cables were deployed.

[@kingwing5963]

What would these people think about fiber optic and the internet i wonder

[@karelltulod3079]

Amazing

[@maysammirzakhalili4862]

What a brilliant and woderful people. Where are these people today ? I own my life comforts to them . why I am so useless compare to them?

[@confusedbadger6275]

"Where are these people today" Notice they were all white men. Diversity is not strength

[@confusedbadger6275]

"Where are these people today" Notice they were all white men. Diversity is not strength

[@DoctorShocktor]

Confused Badger And you’re a dumbshit racist/sexist who understands nothing. Congrats

[@DoctorShocktor]

Maysam Mirzakhalili how the hell do you think smartphones, prosumer Drones, flat screen TVs, new foods and medicines, etc all exist? They aren’t given to us by aliens, these people still exist.

[@nbarrager]

They've been changing the definition of "broadband" since the fifties

[@whiteclifffl]

I have a strength member in the center.

[@frother]

A **hundred** conversations at once? Lmao

[@zvpunry1971]

Try to come up with a circuit that allows 5 concurrent conversations on a coaxial cable using discrete electronic components (modern transistors allowed but no integrated circuits). Even a simple description of a circuit that could do this would be fine. Then imagine not having access to the internet or modern components and their datasheets and application notes.

[@madmanmapper]

@@zvpunry1971 And you can't use a calculator...

[@zvpunry1971]

MadMan: I think you have used the wrong reply button. He should be allowed to use a calculator, the modern equivalent of a slide rule. Today I would even be happy with a summary of a wikipedia article about FDM, but I don't expect any response. ;) Even if we now have extremely high bandwidths available, there is no reason to laugh at the early developments like he did (At least that is how I interpreted his "Lmao"). We are standing on the shoulders of giants.

[@frother]

@@zvpunry1971 I took some EE classes in college; I know about multiplexing. I'm just laughing at how they seem so awed by the apparently staggering number 100, as if that should last them awhile, like how could more than 100 people simultaneously want to transmit information across the ocean? haha

[@zvpunry1971]

frother: The "Lmao" can be perceived as condescending. Anyways, if you think about the first transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1) from 1956 which could at first carry only 36 concurrent calls, the increase to 100 calls was quite an achievement. The cables used before were used for telegraphs only, no phone calls. The capacity of the TAT-1 was later increased to 51 and by using a system that switched calls on channels that were momentarily silent, they could use it for 72 concurrent calls. The increase in bandwidth/capacity of these cables is still awe-inspiring. TAT-14 has currently a bandwidth of 3.2 Tb/s and the MAREA cable has a bandwidth of 160 Tb/s and it still has reserves for large improvements.

[@geocentricmax2038]

THE REAL SATELLITES..

[@DoctorShocktor]

Hey look, it’s a real idiot. Find someone to explain to you how different types of technology exist simultaneously for different needs.

[@geocentricmax2038]

@@DoctorShocktor kzbin.info/www/bejne/oamWoqqnqb-pqZY

[@geocentricmax2038]

@@DoctorShocktor kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z3TCeYZ4j7yqiZI

[@geocentricmax2038]

@@DoctorShocktor listen to the PROs you stupid idiot..

[@Arabhacks]

What was the maximum frequency range of this coaxial cable? Did the cable operate in a full duplex mode, and if so, how? TDMA? FDMA, or were a pair of cables required?

[@yuvegotmale]

I cant iamgine this cable still being used today. The advent of satellites surely put cables out of business.

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

Byron; The cable shown in this program (TAT-1) was retired in 1978. One would think that satellites put submarine cables out of business but that would be incorrect. The problem is that for a satellite to be continuously visible to the 2 points on Earth that are trying to communicate with each other it has to be in geosynchronous orbit at a altitude of 22,236 miles above the earth's equator. This means the radio signals, which travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), have to travel at least 44,500 miles to make the trip to the satellite and back to Earth. This introduces a delay in the signal of about a quarter of a second. This is not a problem for some types of traffic. An example would be radio or television programs. You just hear or see them 1/4 second later at the receiving end. For 2 way voice communication, however, it is a real problem especially when you consider that there is also a delay on the return trip so the total lag will be about a half a second. Tests show that this is very disruptive to human conversation. You can't change the speed of light so the only answer is to shorten the distance. Submarine cables do that very effectively. New York City USA to London UK. is about 3,450 miles leading to a round trip delay of about 37 milliseconds (0.037 seconds) which is quite OK for a 2 way phone call. What really put coaxial submarine cables such as shown in this program out of business was the development of fibre-optic cables with multiple fibres. This massively increased the amount of traffic that could be carried on a single cable and the lower loss per mile means that fewer repeaters are needed and repeaters have always been the weak points of submarine cables. Submarine cables are also MUCH less expensive to build per unit of information transferred than satellites and if a fault develops the cable can usually be accessed and repaired which is impossible with satellites in geosynchronous orbit. These days (2021) the amount of traffic on satellites is but a small fraction of 1% of the traffic carried by submarine fibre-optic cables. That being said, there are are some things that satellites do better than submarine cables. One example is getting relatively small amounts of information to and from isolated areas that are not served by fibre-optic cables such as very isolated communities or ships in the middle of an ocean.

[@icedudesk8]

@@Vincent_Sullivan excellent history review! A few years ago, there was an illustration available (perhaps by then, "Cable&Wireless", company). They laid down thousands of miles of fibre optic cables, between the contients. Most are still in use, but older coaxial submarine cables are now retired

[@tonydinkel]

These were frequency division multiplex, 4 wire equivalent circuits with east-west in one frequency band and west east in a different band. I can't imagine that the frequencies exceeded 5 mhz in the early systems. Probably lower. And they sounded like hell!

[@brainfreeze44131]

Bet nobody knew that AT^T had a submarine division?

[@icedudesk8]

It was part of the division called "Long Lines". The cable-laying ship, was eventually built and the ship moored in Baltimore

[@jaminova_1969]

That way, Batman can talk to Aquaman whenever he needs to!

[@jeffbaloga4376]

Very cool!!👍👍

[@CaliforniaTravelVideos]

Yes indeed, in retrospect those seemed like the good old days. Asking everyday Americans the scope of Bell Labs would be akin to blind men describing their experience touching an elephant, and not only that, doing so over the entire lifetime. The comments here are both interesting and entertaining. Generally, IMO here's some of the various ways to describe Bell Labs: - technological communications breakthroughs in satellites/submarine cables/lasers (including use to trap atoms)/switching systems including ESS/cellular & CDMA/TDMA or... - discoveries in fundamental physics as the transistor/TTL logic/solar cells/big bang theory/cosmic microwave radiation/wave matter/LSI MOS-FET/CCD sensors/Time Domain Reflectometry or... - breakthroughs in computer sciences like Unix/C and C++ Object-oriented Programming/Source Code Control Systems or... - wartime divisions work as tow-way radios/proximity fuses/Nike missile/Bazooka/their Sandia Labs support on nuclear devices/voice encryption/cryptography/SONAR/RADAR/codebreaking Others would describe Bell Labs by its physical locations like Murray Hill, Holmdel, White Plains, Freehold, Lincroft, Middletown, Naperville-Lisle, Indian Hills, Whippany, Columbus, Denver, Andover, Indianapolis, Greensboro, Alamogordo, etc Some would point to their plethora of patents, too numerous to cite. On that note, when Google decided to compete in the smartphone space they wisely bought Motorola to own their patents that allowed them to counter-sue other manufacturers, soon spinning of the Motorola acquisition minus their patents. Bell Labs being part of the AT&T monopoly wasn't into aggressive lawsuits and didn't "lawyer up" like today's entrepreneurial market leaders. Yet others would point to the evolution of Bell Labs over time, most of us struggling to identify the impact both within the organization and impacts to customers and the United States itself. Going way back, Alexander Graham Bell was very lucky that Western Union let Bell's voice patents slide, thinking Western Unions teletype and telegraph was the future of telephony. Fifteen years later Western Electric was formed, later to be the parent of Bell Labs under the overarching AT&T. Forty years later the Labs were ready to avoid the New York congestion and moved to Murray Hill and began to spread out in New Jersey. The parent AT&T followed likewise, formally making legal entities for AT&T and Western Electric in 1925, with Bell Labs reporting to "WECO." Bell Labs began to blossom, especially in the 1940 as World War II broke out. Of course in 1984 when Judge Green oversaw the Divestiture of AT&T and Long Lines from the 23 Bell Operating companies, the writing was on the wall that life would forever change. Initially "BellCore" grabbed some Bell Labs folks to work under a unit called AT&T Labs. A decade later came yet another split-up, this time a Tri-vestiture as AT&T spun-off NCR and Western Electric (aka Network Systems)/Bell Labs. Initially life was grand during the "Dot-Com" boom cycle as Lucent stock went up 10-fold. But with all boom surges, a bust shall follow with the glut of telecom gear sold, the emergence of lowball Chinese manufacturers who commoditized the marketplace, as well as technological improvements Internet packet-based telecom switching. By 2000, competitors Alcatel and Nortel were still going strong (for a while) but when Lucent started sinking and it couldn't reach a merger-acquisition agreement with Alcatel, Lucent's stock price seemed to match their corporate logo (a splashy RED ZERO). Lucent's business systems was sold to Avaya to raise cash, then microelectronics to Agere Systems as Lucent continued to bleed Billion$ of losses each quarter. Soon Lucent was down to 30,000 employees from 165,000 in its heyday (yes, I was one to eventually hit the dusty trail, myself). Finally by 2006, Lucent agreed to merge with Alcatel but the marriage was not successful so 10 years later the Lucent-Alcatel entity was merged by Nokia. Amen. Michael

[@malvinderkaur541]

Such hard intense work went into making peoples lives modern moving forward now is need to pay attention to lot of other social civil matters with equally diligence not what societies leaderships have spiraled into , restructuring reforming mostly from medical housing systems to major one of waste garbage managment

[@jebidiahkerman4600]

imagine if it got tangled

[@jonimiller1954]

Great vid, you would not be wearing ties anywhere near machinery nowadays though!

[@rcdogmanduh4440]

Tgff great stuff.

[@regdunlop2907]

coax cable systems today are being deployed to handle up to 1 ghz of bandwidth known as HFC (hybrid fibre coax) Digital and analog signals are transmitted over fibre from the cable companies Central office (known as a head end) over fibre then converted to coaxial cable for the last mile.

[@RyanSchweitzer77]

Exactly. Most cable television/internet systems are built this way--including the cable system in my town, which was upgraded to an HFC system about roughly 20 years ago (prior to then, it was all coax, using thicker "trunk" coax cables from the headend to the last mile, where it then terminated to regular RG-59 cable drops at the subscriber's premises). Soon after the HFC upgrade, the cable company was able to offer much more TV channels and more advanced services, such as interactive digital cable TV and 2-way cable internet.

[@-fuk57]

@@RyanSchweitzer77 An 8-12 foot piece of that "trunk" cable makes an excellent camping accessory (tarps & stays) here in the Pacific Northwest.

[@estusflask982]

Now it's fiber from the CO all the way to customer's house.

[@bertroost1675]

Peak

[@JohnSmith-mz3ny]

I cant imagine germanium transistors doing this?

[@gregorymalchuk272]

Yeah, history has shown germanium transistors to be very unstable.

[@beefchicken]

Gregory Malchuk the germanium transistors are fine, it’s tin whiskers inside the cans that are the problem.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@beefchicken Has it actually been confirmed that that is indeed the failure mode? Are there germanium transistors whose cases weren't coated in tin?

[@beefchicken]

Gregory Malchuk google “NASA tin whiskers”, that should get you to the “NASA Tin Whisker (and Other Metal Whisker) Homepage”, which has lots of good reading on tin whiskers as well as analysis of a number of scenarios. I’d post the link but KZbin usually dumps comments with links in them. I can’t say that is the cause of all failures, but there are definitely recorded examples on that page where a tin whisker has caused a metal can transistor to become internally shorted. Given that transistor manufacturer data sheets typically don’t list what they plated the _inside_ of their cans with, it would be tough to answer your second question.

[@whiteclifffl]

What about satellites?

[@DoctorShocktor]

An entirely different requirement and performance, look it up.

[@trueleo7893]

Fake. It's flat.

[@Z-Ack]

Is crazy to think that this “state of the art” transmission cabling couldnt even transmit or receive 10 meg.. now we have fiber optic cabling that sit on the same pathway these cables took in the oceans but can push a terabyte/ second... the lasers they use to push those signals are friggn huge and radioactive

[@rjl7655]

very far from easy, we take all these things for granted

[@maysammirzakhalili4862]

I need to kiss their hands.

[@shamrock1961]

And to think all this was going on during the cold war.

[@zloj100]

Ешкин кот как интересно, только ничего не понятно)

[@malvinderkaur541]

Contribution of Good camps excellent brains innovations of first line USA to world is immense, the only factor which saves it’s Good side name from Alexander Graham Bell telephone to Disney yes! The first one to realize it’s imaginative animation amusement park amidst struggles of epic proposition I read saw all historical facts, rest followed later which is to say it’s not bad but given a way to create rest what got created today world is reaping immense profits from those first line creators brains selflessly given to all

[@andrewlankford9634]

First? Rubbish. Telegraph cables were first laid back in the 19th century.

[@Mrcaffinebean]

Do you struggle with listening? The narrator clearly said “the first transatlantic telephone cable”. Telephone and telegraph are different things.

[@8800081]

Forget the cable, boys, we're going to use satellites instead.

[@followme8238]

Wrong, >95% of international data continues to go via undersea cable

[@gregorymalchuk272]

@@followme8238 Yep, most people don't realize this.

[@Mrcaffinebean]

Byte Me if your internet and phone used satellites the latency would be out of this world, literally. No but really, cables are still where it’s at.

[@Buckeystown]

I worked at Comsat Labs back in the day and we provided backup for traffic if there was a cable outage, We didn't have the capacity to cover that much. I have seen maps of the cable system and it is amazing. We used to work with Bell Labs. Mainly as part of CCITT Study Groups doing standards development. I started with FDM analog which was replaced by PCM digital T1/E1 which is giving way to Voice over IP. So much for my classes on tube and transistor theory.

[@SageTrader007]

Satellite are a fiction

[@moog500]

#facttime this technology was made arbitrary by cell phones as they no longer required a hard wired connection. Back in the day to make a transoceanic call you had to bring your OWN landline to your local "TOPS" (trans oceanic phone station) and plug it into the giant cable. I sure am glad cell phones were invented

[@bigredc222]

What they show in this video isn't used, but the fiber optic cable that replaced this is still in use, when you talk on your cell phone, the signal is only in the air till gets to the closest tower, then it goes by fiber to a land line or to the nearest tower to the cell you're calling, then it's back in the air to that phone. It would have to go by satellite to get across the ocean if they didn't use the cable.

[@Mrcaffinebean]

Large Fried Raviolo similar cables are still used today even for cell phones. Your phone doesn’t beam across the ocean.

[@DoctorShocktor]

As explained by others, no. Not to mention data needs that require the speed of a cable instead of satellite.

[@estusflask982]

No. You clearly don't know how cell phones work.

[@alvarobecerrac.9698]

Fact time 😂😂😂😂 it’s clear that you have no idea of what you are saying.

[@dietermontanez6576]

and then came huawei ... adios gringos

[@alvarobecerrac.9698]

LOL! Huawei just copied gringo technology. And they use gringo software to run their products.