Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

Whose submarine cables are they?

The data surprised me. 99% of internet traffic occurs through underwater cables. At first, I thought it might not be possible for the number to be so large, but there is a reason why this is so: it is cheaper to send the signal from the bottom of the sea than from the ground, although the cables that we introduce into the bottom of the sea are technologically very complex. So, imagine, an email sent from Bilbao to San Sebastian may go by sea.

The submarine cables are optical fiber. But with a lot of protection, and amplification devices interspersed in the way. Technology is not just material. The map of the seabed must be well known and its installation and maintenance are very expensive. However, it is cheaper to send the signal by sea than to move the Internet by land.

One of the most modern cables that cross the Atlantic, the Cable Marea, departs from the beach of Sopelana and travels 6,600 kilometers to the city of Virginia Beach. On Submarinecablemap.com you can see that it’s just a thumbnail of a complex wired infrastructure.

But the question is, whose submarine cables are they? He travels through it, not only the messages you send to a friend, but also the money from your salary. We're very dependent on submarine cables, and they belong to someone. Traditionally, it has belonged to telegraph and telephone companies and, in some cases, to some governments. The American AT&T and China Telecom are the companies with the most cables. But today, most of the money in these cables comes from Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and other large companies. And there are some big business consortiums involved: The cable that starts from Sopela is from Facebook, Microsoft and the Telefónica operator Telsiux.

It's a very complex subject. It must be recognized that being connected is very beneficial, but we have too many aspects involved in the network of these connections.

In the end, the situation is strange. Maybe you or I are not aware of how much dependence we have on these cables, but the technological society is very aware of that. And even if we are aware of it, it is almost impossible to have an alternative operation in place that protects us against an unexpected event.

Some countries are very vulnerable in this context. It is noteworthy that the map of submarine cables shows that the poorest populations have the lowest number of submarine cable connections. Even there, the usual ones have to lose.