What's cooler than accessing an site hosted in the UK than knowing how it got from there to your screen with around 7 trillion bps to spare (equivalent to 150,000 T3 lines)? The map below shows where many of the undersea optical cables travel and where many new ones are planned.
Although satellites carry plenty of data these days (think cellphones), a vast majority of data is carried via cables, probably because of their enormous bandwidth that satellites simply can't match. And considering the growth of voice and data traffic, 12% and 90% respectively, the extra bandwidth is definitely needed. And when something goes wrong, like a ship's anchor taking out a line, the whole world knows - 75% of all of Asia's internet capacity was cut-off just this week for that exact reason. Cool, huh?
Here's a movie (old) about laying fiber optics, short and sweet:
Update: Apparently a ship's anchor did not do the damage, since the area is actually a no-sail zone and no ships were in the area at the time. Let the conspiracy theories rage!
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