How does the internet connect across continents?
Through fibre optic cables that lie submerged on the ocean floor across the Earth. These cables allow us to quickly send our emails and videos, and connect our browsers to places in faraway lands.
To put it simply, when we open an Australian website in Mumbai, our personal computer sends a signal through the submarine cable to the web server that is hosting that website and then receives the data of the website in return over the same cable.
Earlier communication satellites were used to transmit data but since optical fibres are capable of transmitting large volumes of data at a much faster speed, submarine cables now account for more than 99% of all international communications.
The first submarine communications cables were laid in the 1850s to send telegraphs. Modern cables use optical fibre technology to carry digital data. There is a massive network of submarine fibre optic cables that connect a large portion of the continents except Antarctica.
