If the internet is primarily dependent on cables that run through oceans connecting different countries and continents. During a war, anyone can cut off a country’s access to the internet. Are there any backup or mitigant in place to avoid this? What happens if you cut the cable?
In: Technology
Not necessarily in times of war, but there have been incidents of cable breach.
From time to time you’ll hear of large outages to say Southern California or Japan. These are a result of cable damage. Usually a result of large scale fishing trollers or petroleum exploration.
Technology and mapping have gotten better to help prevent this. GPS is now much more accurate. This is important in mapping where the cable is dropped and important on mapping where the vessel is trying to avoid the cables.
Picture your town and you wanted to dig a pool. Now you call the utilities and they come and paint lines across your property where underground service is located. In the early days of transatlantic and transpacific cabling, your utility company would only be able to say “yup we have cables buried under your block somewhere” and that was the closest info you could get.
As for redundancy… that costs money and has to be weighed against the likelihood of needing it. It would cost millions upon millions of dollars to drop a second run of cable. Is that expenditure risk worth it now that location can be better determined? That’s up to the service providers to account for.
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