Most people think the internet is beamed around the planet by satellites. In fact, 90 per cent of global internet traffic is carried by a vast cable network, thousands of miles of which snake under the oceans.
The two busiest internet hubs are New York and London, and nine cables link them. But the one pictured above is the Atlantic's newest and most advanced submarine cable system. It is so powerful that it could carry the entire internet content in both directions even if the other eight lines failed simultaneously.
'Huge capacity down single cables is great,' says Kevin Connor of Global Marine Systems, one of the world's largest undersea cable installation and maintenance firms. 'That is, until that cable gets cut.'
Leading-edge undersea cables get cut or damaged all the time, either by fishing boats trawling the seabed or an anchor clumsily dropped in the wrong place. When that happens, millions of connections, not to mention the huge income they generate, are wiped out instantly.
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