Another cablecut - sri lanka to suez Re: Sicily to Egypt undersea cable disruption

Fri Feb 1 22:44:07 UTC 2008

On Feb 1, 2008 2:35 PM, Rod Beck <Rod.Beck at hiberniaatlantic.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Not at all, there have been cables in the water since 1858 (first
> TransAtlantic cable - telegraph). Right now there are 80 major cables out
> there.
>
>  Give yourself 170 years of undersea cables and calculate the odds.
>
>  :)

hm. I wonder what the odds are (I don't have enough figures to do the
math myself):

80 cables worldwide (first time I'd heard that figure, actually)
X square miles of shipping lanes
Y ships in those lanes
Z square miles of overlap between shipping lanes and cable run
# of times, on average, a ship drops anchor outside of a port

maybe there's a lot more overlap in shipping lanes and cable runs than
I thought ...

(or maybe we just got unlucky, and we'll have a nice long period of no
undersea cuts following these :))
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