TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map lately hit a brand new milestone: depicting over 650 cable programs.
As of February 2025, that’s a whopping 570 in-service programs, with one other 81 deliberate.
The variety of cable programs we examine is consistently rising. This is because of huge funding on this infrastructure—each alongside main routes and to small islands—in addition to our ongoing efforts to trace international programs in additional element.
The variety of in-service programs is bigger now than in another yr throughout the final 20 years.
What’s included on this rely?
We concentrate on publicly-known communications programs; undersea traces completely devoted to energy transmission, analysis networks, and personal authorities use are excluded. As soon as cables are retired, we take away them from our on-line map.
A couple of seasons in the past, I joined my colleague Greg Bryan on TeleGeography Explains the Web to speak by the cable-tracking course of.
You possibly can hearken to the total episode over right here.
What will we imply by cable programs?
The variety of cable programs we observe is completely different from the overall point-to-point connections proven on the map.
The variety of cable programs we observe is completely different from the overall point-to-point connections proven on the map.
Every cable system is uniquely designed to suit its capability necessities and native geography. As such, it could comprise a number of segments or branches, as do over half of the programs on our map.
The distinction between cable programs and segments is most simply demonstrated within the Atlantic. Though there are solely 13 in-service trans-Atlantic cable programs, 17 segments truly cross this route.
That is made potential by programs like Vodafone’s Apollo, which celebrates its twenty second birthday this month. Apollo connects the U.S., France, and the U.Ok. by two parallel paths—one North, the opposite South, and every with their very own pair of touchdown stations.
Interactive map followers shall be conversant in our cable trivia. One month, we requested map viewers to ponder the typical variety of landings per system on the map. Our winner acknowledged the complexity of subsea system design by appropriately guessing not two, not three, however 5!
Together with trivia questions, our group often rolls out new map options. Due to a latest replace, customers can now:
- Search by area and route. Navigate to the brand new Area and Route pages by typing Related to [region name] or Related to [route name] within the search discipline.
- Filter choices by a spread of RFS years. A Filter button is accessible within the sidebar on Area, Nation, Touchdown Level, Route, and Provider pages that return an inventory of three or extra cables.
Head over to submarinecablemap.com to see for your self.
