A volcanic eruption off the coast of Tonga severed the country's only international subsea data cable, causing a widespread internet outage.

The United Kingdom has assigned two military naval vessels to permanently patrol its waters to protect undersea infrastructure, including data cables, power cables, and pipelines.

The world's longest subsea cable, named 2Africa, is funded and owned almost entirely by Meta.

The global production of subsea fiber optic cables is concentrated among a handful of companies.

A new transatlantic subsea cable between London and New York costs approximately $500 million to build.

The recent boom in AI is accelerating the need for new subsea cables, ending previous concerns about a potential glut in cable capacity.

The only organizations that build and operate their own private, dedicated subsea cable networks are national militaries, such as those of the United States and China.

Baltic and Scandinavian nations have increased coast guard patrols due to concerns that Russian ships are attempting to cut subsea cables as an act of gray zone warfare.

Industry experts are concerned that U.S.-China competition will lead to a "bifurcation of the internet," resulting in two parallel and superfluous cable systems in certain parts of the world.

HMN, a spinoff of Huawei, is the primary Chinese company that competes globally in the subsea cable-laying industry.

West African governments, such as Cote d'Ivoire, face a dilemma of either accepting internet infrastructure from companies like Meta without data sovereignty protections or risking the company choosin...

The Taiwanese government is concerned that China may attempt to cut all 15 of its international internet cables as an act of war.

There is only one company in the world that produces the specialized software used by cable-laying ships to determine their path and speed.

The subsea cable industry is cyclical, with investment slowing during economic recessions; after the dot-com bust in the early 2000s, there was a five-year period of stasis in new cable laying.

The Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz are critical chokepoints for global internet traffic, where a malicious actor could severely disrupt connectivity by cutting the numerous cables that pass through ...

Approximately 100 subsea cables are cut each year, with most incidents caused by accidents such as ship anchors or fishing trawlers.

Two out of every three new subsea cables are now funded and owned, either partially or fully, by Google, Meta, Amazon, or Microsoft.

No new direct subsea cable has been laid between China and the United States in years, forcing rapidly growing internet traffic between the two countries to be routed through third countries like the ...

There are between 500 and 550 active undersea cables operating around the world.

Modern fiber optic cables used at the bottom of the ocean are as thin as a human hair and are made of highly purified glass.