Almost all worldwide web visitors – from cloud workloads to streaming video – voyages alongside a handful of submarine fibre-optic cable highways. These undersea trunks join continents, energy the web, and underpin the so-called AI ‘supercycle’ – in addition they make terrestrial cross-border hyperlinks appear like nation tracks.
In sum – what to know:
Sub-sea thoroughfares – transatlantic, transpacific, Africa–Europe, and intra-Asia subsea hyperlinks carry lots of of terabits per second, dwarfing terrestrial routes.
Land-based linkages – all terrestrial cross-border routes mixed account for lower than one p.c of worldwide web visitors, making them a rounding error compared.
Cash guidelines, not maps – knowledge is routed by way of main ‘port’ exchanges, the place hyperscalers and carriers interconnect and funnel it onto the submarine spine.
So this text began as a primer about sub-sea fibre-optic cable – what it’s, who makes it, who manages it, how it’s altering – however bought side-tracked by untangling a single statistic, which is, directly, each acquainted, typically quoted by the subsea business, and in addition exceptional: that 99 p.c of the world’s web / knowledge visitors flows on these subsea programs. Take into consideration that; as a result of, on a primary cross, it sounds mad. It implies that each one cross-border knowledge flows inside continental Europe, between neighbouring Asian states, throughout the Americas (and so on) quantity to lower than one per cent of worldwide visitors. It feels improper, proper? That’s till you study how the worldwide web works.
As a result of within the world web, a small variety of intercontinental routes carry overwhelmingly-more knowledge than all regional terrestrial border-routes mixed. Contemplate the largest corridors: the transatlantic hyperlinks between the US and Europe; the transpacific routes between the US and East Asia; the high-capacity ring between Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore; the Europe-Asia programs by way of the Indian Ocean; and the Africa-Europe connections by way of the Mediterranean. These cables, and the hyperscale cloud and content material platforms that journey on them, transfer breathtaking quantities of information – lots of of terabits per second per system, with a number of programs laid in parallel.
By comparability, the terrestrial cross-border fibre hyperlinks inside Europe, or Asia, or the Americas are minuscule. A German-French border crossing may see visitors peaks of some terabits per second. Main submarine trunk routes – like MAREA (between the US and Spain; owned by Microsoft, Meta, Telxius), JUPITER (between the US, Japan, the Philippines; owned by Google, plus others), or 2Africa (a hoop round Africa, connecting EMEA; owned by Meta, MTN, Vodafone, Orange) – strikes lots of of terabits per second. In pure arithmetic phrases, one giant subsea cable can out-carry your entire terrestrial cross-border infrastructure of a continent. With its eyes closed, to rob a phrase.
Which is why the statistic holds, and will get quoted. Terrestrial-continental cable infrastructure knits collectively cross-border flows, in fact. However even while you add collectively each such terrestrial cross-border route – Germany-France, Poland-Germany, Italy-Austria, Thailand-Cambodia, US-Canada, and all the remaining – the mixed whole remains to be tiny relative to this handful of big sub-oceanic pathways. The imbalance is primarily a product of web structure: world visitors is focused on a handful of high-capacity submarine routes connecting the main knowledge hubs. The largest knowledge flows usually are not between intern-continental nation neighbours, however between hubs and entire continents.
The US-Europe and US-Asia subsea routes account for an enormous share of all world worldwide visitors, simply on their very own. Add intra-Asia subsea flows between main coastal hubs, plus the Europe-Asia corridors, and Africa’s dependence on Mediterranean touchdown stations, and nicely over 90 p.c of worldwide worldwide capability is accounted for. That is earlier than you even contemplate a single land border.
It’s additionally a consequence of how operators route visitors, in fact. Even in areas with intensive terrestrial programs – comparable to Europe, notably – networks are constructed to funnel knowledge towards main coastal exchanges like London (a significant touchdown level for transatlantic subsea cables, and a centre for hyperscaler cloud knowledge centres), Amsterdam (a key peering hub between northern Europe and cables from the UK, US, and Scandinavia, with a dense carrier-neutral knowledge centre ecosystem), Marseille (a southern European touchdown hub and gateway for the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Center East), and Frankfurt (a central European spine hub connecting a number of terrestrial and subsea routes).
These are the nodes the place hyperscalers, content material supply networks (CDNs), and ‘tier-one’ carriers interconnect, and the place price and efficiency are optimised. The only and least expensive path in community phrases shouldn’t be essentially essentially the most direct one. Ultimately, the web follows economics, not maps. Simply to shut, right here: there’s a helpful analogy in freight logistics, the place the worldwide business is dominated by container transport between a small variety of main ports, whereas cross-border trucking (in every single place on the roads) solely accounts for a sliver of worldwide tonnage. The identical is true of information: regional terrestrial flows matter domestically, however they’re a rounding error subsequent to the megaflows beneath the oceans.
