2 ms·
Apart from the sophisticated communications technology that goes into achieving maximum throughput through these long distances, is the power supply of the cabl
by cycomanic 5y ago
Apart from the sophisticated communications technology that goes into achieving maximum throughput through these long distances, is the power supply of the cables.
These cables have an optical amplifier every 50-100km which are supplied by DC power supplied through the protective metal armor around the fibres. Now if you think about it, what is ground if you have a cable between continents? There is no such thing as global ground, so there can be potential differences between of thousands of Volts.
Another one, how do you repair a broke cable that lays at a depth of 500m? TLDR, you bring both ends to the surface and splice a 1km of new cable between them. There are some videos from subcom (former TE subcom) on YouTube.
- comboy 5y agoCan you elaborate on the ground cable? I mean as shielding it should work regardless of what you described here, right? And regarding voltage between these two points, why would it be so high? And wouldn't it go down to 0 quickly after connecting the cable?
- cycomanic 5y agoSorry what I meant is that if you just connect to the ground on one continent you might have a huge potential difference, compared to the ground on the original continent. So if you would want to run your system on e.g. 100 V you need to make sure that the relative difference between your two end-points is 100 V and that voltage is unrelated to the voltage to ground at either endpoint.