Obligatory link to the absolutely brilliant Neal Stephenson article about a very long fiber optic cable. "Mother Earth Mother Board" http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html

This is my all-time favourite Wired article, a fascinating read...so much so, that I still have the original print edition.

I highly commend this article if you haven't read it. Utterly fascinating and well-wrote.

Obligatory link to a fascinating (because it is so mundane) photograph of the East Coast terminus of a fiber link

The photographer, Taryn Simon, has a fascinating book of images of places that are not accessible to the public ("An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar")

> My favourite is the Transatlantic Submarine Cables Reaching Land (VSNL International, Avon, NJ). It is really scary to realize that something that looks so fragile and mundane as those orange cables holds the key to all the virtuality that has come to almost constitute the essence of my life.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/0aaechellle.jpg

http://tarynsimon.com/tarynsimon1_cryonics.html

The best part of the article is this quote:

This is the cable-splicing machine used on board the Ile de Batz--one of the most delicate and precise pieces of equipment on a ship laden with very heavyweight gear.

Next to it is shown a picture of a fiber optic cable split in half, and a roll of electrical tape.

And the roll of electrical tape is to stop the very fragile and expensive splice rolling off the table.

Damnit, I thought 'undersea cable ship' meant the ship was a submarine.

How do they power the repeaters?

An undersea cable is made up of a about a dozen different layers of alternating conductors, braided jackets, and water-proofing. Power is provided by a conductor surrounding the fiber in center of the cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable

Usually at the landing sites there's power feed equipment, as explained at the end of the article. There's some more basic information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable