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For teachers

5 stations on this tour

1. Cornwall — Cable Landing Hub

   95% of intercontinental data travels through undersea fiber-optic cables — NOT satellites. Cornwall, England is one of the world's most important cable landing points. Cables connecting to the US, Europe, and Africa converge here. A single cable can carry 250 terabits per second.

2. Suez Canal & Red Sea — Chokepoint

   Over a dozen submarine cables pass through the Red Sea and Suez corridor, carrying internet traffic between Europe and Asia. In 2024, Houthi attacks damaged 3 cables, disrupting 25% of traffic for months. This narrow passage is one of the most vulnerable points in global internet infrastructure.

3. Singapore — Asia's Digital Crossroads

   Singapore is the largest submarine cable hub in Asia, where cables from Europe, Australia, Japan, and the Americas converge. It houses over 70 data centers. If Singapore's cable connections were severed, half of Southeast Asia's internet would go dark.

4. Transatlantic Cables — The Backbone

   The first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858. Today, over 15 fiber-optic cables connect North America to Europe across the Atlantic seabed. Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon have invested billions in private cables. A single modern cable can handle the entire internet traffic of a medium-sized country.

5. The Global Cable Network

   There are over 550 active submarine cables spanning 1.4 million kilometers across the ocean floor. They are just 3cm thick but carry $10 trillion in financial transactions daily. Cable damage from ship anchors, earthquakes, and even shark bites causes ~200 faults per year. Without these cables, the modern internet would cease to exist.

Worksheet — Digital Silk Road