TAT-14
Cable run
TAT -14 is the abbreviation for Transatlantic Telecommunications Cable no 14 (Eng. Trans-Atlantic telephone cable No. 14), a powerful underwater cable connecting North America with Europe via two routes.
Structure
The TAT -14 was inaugurated after two and a half years of construction on 21 March 2001.
The cost of its production and laying amounted to approximately 1.3 billion U.S. dollars, with about half of the amount was expended solely for the laying of the cable. The cost was shared by 50 telecommunications companies, including the German Telekom AG, with 250 million DM participated (about 128 million euros ). For laying an approximately one meter deep channel was plowed into the seabed. In places where the ground was too hard, the cable is reinforced with a steel jacket. These measures are intended to protect it from mechanical stresses, such as may be caused by ship anchors, for example.
The cable is 15,000 km total length of 50 mm thick and has eight glass fibers or four fiber pairs. The cable system is designed in a ring topology, so that if a cable break, the data can be passed over the still intact part of the ring. Consist Through this topology, two routes between North America and Europe, each track up to 160 Gbit / s (640 Gbit / s total) can transfer per fiber pair. So together are possible over a terabit or the equivalent of about 160 gigabytes of data per second.
One route starts in the north ( Germany ) and runs over Blåbjerg (Denmark) and the Shetland Islands by the Atlantic Ocean to Manasquan and Tuckerton (New Jersey). Another route also starts in the north and via Katwijk (Netherlands ) Saint- Valéry -en- Caux (France), Bude ( Great Britain) by the Atlantic Ocean back to Tuckerton and Manasquan. This Seekabelendstellen believed by U.S. security agencies as important to the national security of the United States.
Damage
In November 2003, it came within a few weeks to two cable breaks, which Internet services in the UK at times could not be used.
On 23 March 2008, there was again a defect, probably in the area of Calais. Internet connections in the United States have been thwarted by it.
Monitoring by the GCHQ
On 24 June 2013 it was announced that the British intelligence agency GCHQ in the station Bude in Cornwall is to be able to fully listen to the traffic. Through documentation of the former NSA employee Edward Snowden was announced that data was probably intercepted from TAT -14 in the British seaside town of Bude ( search the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the NDR ). The cable is one of more than 200 fiber-optic cables that GCHQ anzapfe under the secret program tenses and audition. Here, the service obviously directly at nodes of the cable ( splice ) has been using to communications companies and thus did not reach to the outside of the cable. When spying on the British monitoring service, two telephone companies have been helping, Vodafone and British Telecommunications (BT).
Weblink
- TAT -14 undersea cable