Transpacific Unity Fiber Optic Cable Leaves Japan 136
JoshuaInNippon writes "The 10,000 km (6,200 mile) long Unity fiber optic cable, funded by Google and five East Asian communication companies, left Japanese shores on November 1st to be laid along the northern Pacific Ocean floor. The Japanese end of the cable is expected to be fused to the American end sometime around November 11th. The cable, which was announced in February of 2008 at a cost of around $300 million USD, has the theoretical capacity of 7.68 Tbps, but will be set at a capacity of about 4.8 Tbps (supposedly equivalent to about 75 million simultaneous phone calls) during its initial use. When Unity begins full operation sometime early next year, it is projected to increase internet traffic capacity between the two regions by over 20%, a wonderful boost to transpacific relations!"
Re:How does that work, exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you need repeaters every 100km or so, which are powered through the cable by DC current.
Other than that, I think it just lays in the bottom, yes. These are sturdy cable, they weigh about 10 kg/m.
Re:How does that work, exactly? (Score:5, Informative)
Wikipedia, pfffft. I learned all I need to know about Trans Oceanic Fiber Optic cables in 56 short pages thanks to Neal Stephenson... http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html [wired.com]
Re:How much of that cost is the cable? (Score:4, Informative)
How much of that cost is the cable?
http://www.isp-planet.com/business/fiber_price_bol.html [isp-planet.com]
On land rural jobs cost about $15K/mile. On land super-urban jobs cost about $500K/mile. The difference is permits, corruption, kickbacks, etc. Also scaling is important, "one job in Montana" may be hundreds of miles, and "one job in Manhatten" may be measured in feet, but the fixed costs are... fixed... so the cost per mile seems higher on the short jobs.
If you assume underwater fiber costs around as much as the total cost of cheap rural route, the 6200 mile route times 16K/mile equals about $100M. That makes sense, since the whole job is only supposed to cost about $300M.
Repairing fiber is somewhat more difficult than laying fiber because it's time sensitive. But then again they probably charge by the hour anyway. Since a "several day" repair job approaches $10M, if you assume that is 4 days at $10M total, that would be about $2.5M per day. The little row boat they're using is going to take about 40 days to paddle across the pond, 40 days * $2.5M a day conveniently works out to about $100M. That makes sense, since the whole job is only supposed to cost about $300M.
Add in the usual admin overhead, several multimillion dollar executive bonuses, engineering work, station gear at each endpoint, marketing and sales upfront expenses including slashvertisements, booze, coke, etc, I think they could blow somewhat less than $100M on that.
My labor estimate is probably about right for overtime repair work and a bit high for contracted construction work. My estimate for overhead may be a bit high. That means the cost of the cable itself probably is about $125M to $150M.
Re:How does that work, exactly? (Score:3, Informative)
One of my favorite things Wired ever published. I liked it so much I made a map to go along with it since Neal was kind enough to supply GPS coordinates in the article. http://visualcompanion.org/Map_-_Mother_Earth_Mother_Board.php [visualcompanion.org]
Particularly neat (to me) was to see the cove of the Museum of Submarine Telegraphy, Porthcurno, Cornwall exactly as he described it.
Re:How does that work, exactly? (Score:3, Informative)