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‘over 95% of global communications traffic is handled by just 1 million km of undersea fiber-optic cable.’ 'Just'? 1 million km is a lot of wire, you could wra

‘over 95% of global communications traffic is handled by just 1 million km of undersea fiber-optic cable.’ 'Just'? 1 million km is a lot of wire, you could wrap that length around the earth over 25 times. I can't imagine what the author of that sentence thought would be a more reasonable length of undersea cable...

Ductapemaster 6y ago
Personally, I read it more as "95% of it is over a single medium", and that it's less about the actual length. But, for the sake of comparison, the US has 6,853,024km of roads and 95,932km of expressways according to Wikipedia [0] (far and away the most of any country in the world, interestingly). Broadband penetration for the US is >50% for any demographic [1], so extrapolating there's millions of kilometers of internet cable just to support the US's internet needs. So maybe that number is pretty amazing after all... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/710877/adult-home-broadband-users-in-the-us-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/710877/adult-home-broadb...
- gizmo385 6y ago
  I don't know that I would compare miles of road to miles of undersea internet cables. I think undersea internet cables are more akin to interstates in that they connect hubs from which local traffic can branch off. For sake of comparison, there are 46,876 miles of interstate road in the US.
  - Ductapemaster 6y ago
    I realize I didn't make my point well — I intended to use the roads comparison as infrastructure is typically roadside on poles, or underground in a roadway. I thought it would be a relatively good analog for how many miles of cable we have to wire the US.
thephyber 6y ago
The sentence structure works fine if the aggregate length is replaced by the count. > over 95% of global communications traffic is handled by just 23 undersea fiber-optic cables I picked the number "23" at random, but I estimate it to be the right order of magnitude.

Ductapemaster 6y ago

Personally, I read it more as "95% of it is over a single medium", and that it's less about the actual length. But, for the sake of comparison, the US has 6,853,024km of roads and 95,932km of expressways according to Wikipedia [0] (far and away the most of any country in the world, interestingly). Broadband penetration for the US is >50% for any demographic [1], so extrapolating there's millions of kilometers of internet cable just to support the US's internet needs. So maybe that number is pretty amazing after all... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_network_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/710877/adult-home-broadband-users-in-the-us-by-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/710877/adult-home-broadb...

gizmo385 6y ago
I don't know that I would compare miles of road to miles of undersea internet cables. I think undersea internet cables are more akin to interstates in that they connect hubs from which local traffic can branch off. For sake of comparison, there are 46,876 miles of interstate road in the US.
- Ductapemaster 6y ago
  I realize I didn't make my point well — I intended to use the roads comparison as infrastructure is typically roadside on poles, or underground in a roadway. I thought it would be a relatively good analog for how many miles of cable we have to wire the US.

thephyber 6y ago

The sentence structure works fine if the aggregate length is replaced by the count. > over 95% of global communications traffic is handled by just 23 undersea fiber-optic cables I picked the number "23" at random, but I estimate it to be the right order of magnitude.