20.000 cables under the sea (Documentary about the huge fibre optic cables that connect us, 2010)

[Music] two digits become sounds texts images two digits can contain the information for everything billions of people around the world are thinking writing calculating speculating sending and ordering what they're releasing into a data stream that will never run dry again this data stream imparts people's knowledge and experiences it's an opportunity for new markets it's a danger for authoritarian undemocratic systems this data stream is getting faster and wider every day it flows beneath the oceans of the world in submarine communications cables submarine communications cables yellow and black wires as thick as an arm with soles of glass they are the global data Highway and like on any Highway it has its share of breakdowns then the breakdown service is called [Music] yaagh Buckland is a systems technician for international submarine communications cable systems one of these has registered a fault in the depths of the North Sea two days after the error message the deutsche telekom employee is in the dutch port of den helder waiting for the Albatross a marine taxi on a cool morning in February pas currents task to find and rectify the problem according to the shipping forecast the sea will be calm and there will only be a light breeze that's good for Pok land and the camera team because the jack ladder on the side of a vessel is a real challenge even in the best weather [Music] this is the Leon Taverna a cable ship belonging to French Telecom it's waiting a few miles offshore [Music] France and Germany are on the same cable bachlin twill represent the interests of deutsche telekom [Music] but first the strict safety regulations require him to practice putting on the emergency rubber suit hopefully it will remain just that practice the lay on to Vernon can move submarine communications cables find damaged cables and repair them two days a plan for this operation if the weather is agreeable but it won't be agreeable the vessel is named after the French electrical engineer Leon Shah Taverna who was born in 1857 that same year the Great Eastern was built in London it was the largest passenger ship of its day it was uh Nocona Mical and was converted into a cable laying ship it was sold by its builder isambard kingdom brunel to a speculator a man called Cyrus fields had a vision of using the Great Eastern to lay a telegraph cable across the North Atlantic after many failed attempts the vision became reality using what was the modern technology of the time in 1887 the first words reached the new world through a thin wire for the poet stefan zweig it was a shining moment of humanity the many victims have been forgotten [Music] the first telegram through the copper wire to America cost $100 today the cost of an individual email is almost incalculable small submarine communications cables cross entire oceans they are cheaper than satellites cheaper and more reliable as data carriers between the continents [Music] juergen header is yogge pockmarks boss the man whose job it is to find the problem in the cable that comes ashore here but where exactly double Ds the later in oceans if I have to disappoint you there you can't see a cable here because there's no place but the submarine communications cable visibly comes out of the ocean the cable is buried three meters deep and it runs through the Dyke we've done that for security reasons to protect the cable from vandalism and sabotage the faulty cable connects four continents it belongs to a consortium of 94 partners anyone with an error in their section has to look for it starting where the cable ends or begins this is a submarine communications cable endpoint there are many sorts of cables but I'm a fan of these this is an endpoint that we at Deutsche Telekom run as part of the consortium it ends here in northern in this building Yvonne audio Indies in Croydon it's a deliberately inconspicuous building the submarine communications cable lover likes to show visitors the object of his enthusiasm the exterior of this cable is very strong to protect it from mechanical damage inside there's a copper wire that transports the energy it feeds the repeaters right in the middle you see the components that convey the information that's the fiber-optic components or if you're not harden a stable interior the consortium's register little damage the cable customers must have a reliable connection there is a backup connection for every submarine communications cable but nevertheless damage does occur garbage to this cable section is coming to very close contact with fishing equipment with a trawl door which is dragged over the ocean floor by the fishing vessels and it can get caught up in a cable like this this is a result better get mosquitoes walls the worst case scenario it's rare but when it does occur negative then that's an emergency if an entire submarine cable fails we have many alarms going off we have to assess these alarms and we have to decide relatively quickly whether we are dealing with a problem that can be fixed or whether the entire cable has failed completely under the common law statutory if an entire cable does fail these computers immediately switch over to backup cables if the flow of data slows down the location of the cause can be determined down to the precise kilometer yeah there's a camp here in the fiber-optic cable we have a cable fault at kilometer five nine five kilo meter the position kilometer five nine five belongs to Deutsche Telekom in the North Sea just before the cable branches off to Belgium the Leon tavern and we'll look for the problem the crew make their predictions respect Rover classic on the head of the operation says it'll be a classic operation Cochran says they've may get bad weather then they'll have to wait the second officer says that thanks to the different forecasts they know pretty well what to expect in their target area Safety Officer says they're well prepared people could tell you the technician says that as always they know when they're going out but not when they're coming back splice that says it will take time we'll probably have to cut the cable twice since the youngest crew member and the captain says they have a working plan for operations like this one and it will all go so smoothly if they follow that and the apprentice will be happy to get home afterwards the southern North Sea the target area it's day two the search begins for a needle in a haystack this needle or cable is emitting a sound it's just a matter of time before the ship's sensors locate this sound [Music] tension on the bridge the German technician is waiting for a first acoustic contact with the cable although it's defective it can still be located yoke parkland had a telephone call with his colleague in the German submarine communications cable endpoint center this morning requesting a signal [Music] so yeah I'm at the PFE now what did you want exactly 25 Hertz okay and then 100 milliampere yeah okay PF e stands for power feed equipment the technician is feeding the cable with a certain voltage and a deep sound both signals are located by the ship's sensors using these signals the Leon 7al will position itself over the cable on the seafloor in the place where the sound and the current change in an unusual way the fault must be located what is then supposed to happen sounds very simple we are going to use our ROV our remote-controlled robot and we'll send it down to the cable to the place where the fault is so it can determine the nature of the fault then agility for the internet is like an underground system with stations domains servers cloud computing and services such as YouTube and Wikipedia every news station influences the entire system it is expanding into a space now limited only by the capacity of the fiber-optic cables [Music] [Applause] I did last father Hut five objects is a gift of nature the cables have an almost unimaginable bandwidth without that you wouldn't have the internet we wouldn't have emails no YouTube no Google no broadband communication such as videoconferencing none of this would be possible the video conference of the next generation the communication partner appears three dimensionally on the screen the chat partner from overseas seems to be sitting within touching distance in the conference room this technology has been developed at the Hainish Houts Institute part of Berlin's Technical University the people here are working on the future of three-dimensional imaging on displays with depth the tiresome glasses will become superfluous with our normal camera and on your normal screen we only show you an approximate impression it has to be seen to be believed it works but the new screens will probably not be available in shops before all the existing 3d glasses have been sold everything that will influence the market of tomorrow is being developed here here the digital technologies are tested for their suitability for everyday use three-dimensional images on the computer screen three-dimensional objects can be recognized without glasses and controlled with gestures without a mouse or keyboard yeah HD FM auto stance coefficient is I'm standing in front of an auto stereoscopic display these Auto stereoscopic displays have to make information available for both eyes and so they need more information which increases the amount of bandwidth needed to deliver that information we're also developing interactive technologies in the future people will need a return channel for the interactive television and that too will require more bandwidth telephone calls movies x-rays share prices and video conferences all on one data stream how can that be possible digitalized material is turned into data packages these packages contain an address and so they are sent on the data Highway the wider the highway the more lanes it can have the lanes correspond to the frequencies and the cars correspond to the data packages they contain very different passengers emails telephone calls movies data in other words when the packages have arrived at their destination their passengers are unloaded again [Music] but how are more vehicles more packages got to their destination in a certain time the answer is being researched in this laboratory on a test route it is five thousand kilometers long five thousand kilometers doesn't look that way because we're taking advantage of a technical trick we have a recirculating loop control here with which we can cascade the fibers in this cable to replicate several thousand kilometers here in the lab loop control the few kilometers on a real become thousands if they are turned into a loop the data packages are sent on several rounds through the fiber-optic lanes at the speed of light at first yes but over long distances the light is slowed a little [Music] when we transmit the light in a fiber-optic cable it goes a bit slower than it does in air the trick is now to keep these losses on the way to a minimum there's a theoretical limit to this and it would be fair to say we have already reached that theoretical limit First Nations [Music] the University of llena a city that has a history of glass we're visiting the institute of applied physics professor andreas turner man and his graduate student Martin Baumgarten are open to questions and they also have some answers how does the light move through glass what about a lecture no we prefer a practical demonstration data transfer normally uses light that we can't see so for demonstration purposes Martin Baumgarten colors are laser beam green and sends it to the opening of a glass bottle the interface between the water and air reflects and conducts the light beam the light enters the water and is carried along with it the man who spends his days with the light calls this total internal reflection [Music] fermitas leash type of sexy and service providers for me right is sexy modern society faces a number of challenges but as researchers we see that light can provide important solutions for issues of the future energy environment medicine laser light is indeed a fascinating medium this technology was first developed in Germany 40 years ago but the Nobel Prize for modern fiber optics went to an American researcher in 2009 maintaining the speed of light on its path through the glass fibers is the current challenge [Music] we are trying to understand how a light pulse spreads through a glass material we're trying to optimize the five objects for the transmissions [Music] coherent light is transmitted into fibers of varying quality depending on the application the fibers for data transmission have to be particularly long the path from scientific experiments to industrial implementation is shortened llena it's a target Lea discipline the glass falls on the optical fibers made today combine different glass materials as a glass with a high refractive index and a further glass that surrounds this glass in a cylindrical geometry of the community in this furnace a hollow glass body is filled layer by layer with gaseous quartz fused quartz is glass in its purest form the result is an extremely thick fiber the preform in cross-section the fiber for a submarine communications cable looks like this the conducting glass core red in the center the coat is also made of glass a drawing tower is 40 metres tall right at the top the preform is brought up to the right temperature the are pets we have 1930 degrees at the moment but we need 2100 it starts with a drop gravity pulls the red-hot strands downwards the fiberglass that follows cools and six stories down the drawing process will end on the way the fine fiber is given a protective coating the end product is it as thin as a hair it's even tin the formerly thick glass cylinder from the top will be around 800 kilometers long at the end of the drawing process it will have become a fiber it is stretched yet more when it's rolled up adding a few kilometers some fibers are dyed at the end every reel has to be checked does the fiber have the desired transmission capacity is the geometry of the fiber structure correct over the entire length of the fiber the fiber is a perfect high-tech product it couldn't be improved upon or could it one example from nature is the sea mouse which has threads on its back that also conduct light Oh lift light see mice we find them in the Alfred Wegener Institute on Heligoland dr. Franco introduces them Aphrodite a queue later folded into UN colonist gave these creatures the somewhat surprising named Aphrodite after the Greek goddess of beauty love and sexual desire and as you can see this animal can exude a certain glamour nature usually has good reasons when it gives living beings striking qualities regardless of whether it's to say hello Here I am or to scare others off is that also true for the luminous worm from the sea but as the most to survive in ash trees I am inclined to exclude that possibility when it comes to the sea mouse these animals live at considerable depths almost entirely covered by sand where they almost never come into contact with daylight I think these luminous colors of the sea mouse or a pure epiphenomenon that is a side phenomenon associated with the micro structure of the threads he probably has no biological function at least not a primary one this micro structure conducts light with minimal loss the cross-section of the threads reveals a powerful photonic crystal know how from nature to optimize the fiber optics we are currently only using a tiny proportion of this bandwidth that five optics gives us that nature has given us it has to be our goal to secure use of that bandwidth piece by piece we're really only at the beginning we probably still lack the imagination to conceive what lies in store for us in the next 15 years [Music] in the North Sea the Leon tavern arm makes a first contact with the defective cable on the afternoon of the second day but a storm is brewing and the swell is strong nevertheless Hector the underwater robot is being prepared a [Music] cable keeps Hector connected to the ship which supplies the robot with the necessary energy to control the cameras and tools the underwater robot has to go along the cable all the way to the place where the requested signal from the mainland stops the Leone Taverna is moving along the cable route navigating very slowly and maintaining its position exactly above the robot on the sea floor monitored by an automatic navigation system that also regulates the ship's engines in the early hours of the night the sensors signal the ship is getting closer to the damaged area the cable is evidently damaged at this location but that doesn't mean much yet because this is just the exterior that's not uncommon it's just as well the Lian Thevenin doesn't have to rely on visibility to navigate the speed your mom uses it's always about this electronic signal we're still receiving weekly here if there is a real drop in a particular place meaning it briefly disappears then that could be the problem area we're looking for machining via a cut will be made in the cable a few metres before the signal breaks off the robots tools get the cable out of the sand hold it and cut it and then bring the broken cable up at least that's the plan the black and yellow cable is indeed spotted but it keeps disappearing again under meter high sand dunes this animation shows the ideal scenario a symbol for the electronic signal runs along the route to the point where it breaks off the problem area [Music] but the tidal currents waves and the wind put an end to this first attempt tonight's weather forecasts haven't been very good now we're waiting for a good current to bring our robot back up I'm sure we'll soon be able to let the robot back down again to look for the problem this is going to be an expensive forced break twittering blogging emailing skyping 2 billion people communicate via Facebook half a billion keep in touch via Skype and these figures are increasing by millions every week the world is communicating humanity wants to perceive itself in a global soliloquy [Music] fiber optic cables need a thick skin in the past it was made of gutta-percha a rubber material but today the delicate cable interiors are protected by cross-linked plastics we're in northern Hamlet a company by the name of noisy Karl vodka or n SW which traditionally produces cables for energy and data transport above and below the water up to 12 fibres are bundled here into a single strand the heart of the cable the plant has a long history from copper wire to broadband technology the first telegram took almost a day to get from one continent to the other fiber optics are fast [Music] the data rate of this fiber-optic cable is excellent a cable with 12 fiberglass strands like the moment just making can deliver a whole country's communication needs a fiber-optic cable can transmit the data of a thousand CDs in a single second imagine how fast that really is to protect the bundle of fibers and supply energy to the intermediate amplifier copper is still used in cables but no longer in the form of wire a copper tube surrounds the fiber bundle here the fiber bundles in the copper tube and we're not going to say how it gets in there we can't show how a long copper strand becomes a tube but we can switch our cameras back on again where this tube and it's delicate contents are wrapped in a protective coating what makes a cable reliable for decades that's a company secret but there is no secret to how its protected the copper tube is wrapped up several times depending on the final location of the cable the aim is to have the cable withstand undersea earthquakes and bland slips for as long as possible and it shouldn't tear if it gets caught up in fishing equipment although the sea cable business is booming and worldwide data traffic is increasing there aren't many cable manufacturers a handful share the global market a highly competitive market the cable industry consists of experiences there's no clean science for it we manufacture our cables and modify them again we learn from the experiences about different projects it's the small things that make cable special and give them their quality if we reveal these small things we've lost the advantage our experience has given us a freight ship has docked at the NSW jetty it will be loaded with around 800 kilometres of cable 10 repeaters have already been built into the cable every hundred kilometers these steel torpedo sized cylinders make sure the data packages are refreshed on their long route through the oceans [Music] we can load 20 kilometers per shift so it takes no more than five days for a freight vessel to be loaded and unloaded with the cables and then it can go back into the Mediterranean the journey time itself is dependent on the weather especially in the Bay of Biscay but it'll be between 10 to 14 days the Tevon day 3 in the night the future captain's practiced beating against the storm but the weather calms down and at lunch time the cook will produce another exciting meal for the crew namely beefsteak in garlic with potato gratin [Music] the galley feeds 70 people everyday with French cuisine of course the cook has to store lots of provisions before every trip looking for a problem with the cables can take time the cook tailors his menu to the crew the sailors on the Leon Devon are are predominantly from Madagascar the menu with the typically opulent French number of courses contains several exotic ingredients maybe it's thanks to the culinary achievements of the cook that the mood on board the Taverna is exceptionally friendly [Music] what does such a cable repair cost it depends on how long it takes but it could be hundreds of thousands of euros or even Millions cable repair costs also impact the flat rates offered by internet providers a further recovery attempt is scheduled for the afternoon [Music] what we notice is that it seems that the Cabal is well buried very well going in this part yeah so maybe - which one - to greet ya pick up the Quran if it works it's okay after having to wait for 48 hours in the English Channel the technicians have their sights on the cable again Hector the robot is down again to grab the cable so it can be examined and fixed the average depth of the English Channel is a hundred meters the problem with the cable was located in a place that's not very far below the hull of the Leon Taverna it's precision work as the deficits about 20 meters we'll go about 60 metres so 60 meters in the g-spot yeah 60 meters will remove about let about 100 metres left so we can pick it up to the bus remove the box and started wrong turn and subscribe after you the Internet is a powerful market it is changing the way people deal with each other it is changing the world the net is a market place without market rules it is expanding in an unstoppable and unregulated manner every rule becomes unusable long before it reaches the market place [Music] [Applause] the Tulare is an Italian cable-laying ship it will expand the internet by a few kilometers with an international crew the Greek representative of the employer the Spanish cable-laying expert navigator from Italy the German cable specialist testing Cindy am responsible of the project manager from Sicily oily or fiber optical link the Italian captain and my name is Bela down hard Haider whose job it is to oversee the entire installation what is - were welcomed their compliments the road soon the Tulare was chartered by NSW for this job a cable plow will be used between the Aegean islands several kilometers of cable have to be buried in the seabed with this sharp piece of steel its Constitution was already reached months ago plow is the heart of this white vessel it's placed into the water to the rear of the ship and pulled behind the vessel the cable comes from inside the ship and like a thread through the eye of a needle it will be pulled through the plow and placed into the seabed [Music] [Music] the plow tears up the seabed and inserts the cable at a maximum depth of one meter into the resulting furrow Kable layers have always faced the same problem how can the endlessly long cables be installed in the depth of the ocean without any knots or tangles the installation technicians of the Tulare adjusts the speed of the vessel precisely to the optimum speed for unrolling the cable [Music] [Applause] a look back how is the cable prevented from snapping under its own weight that was once the most pressing question on the great eastern an answer was found for the 1,900 kilometers of cable that came out of the huge vessel in a mathematical formula that holds true to this day after many failed attempts the first transatlantic cable was finally successfully laid between Ireland and Newfoundland [Music] weeks later the Tillery anchors off the coast of malta the head of the landing party yen scores and project manager Tom Schmitz inform the ship's crew about their plan for connecting the cable on land I sure we have a small little winch to convince us we will float all the way in about 10 meter 15 meter of the shore we stopped after we have landed the cable the cable will be secured then you will move free laying up to the plow down position will deploy about and immediately go marker boys suspended from these the cable is dragged to the coast it mustn't sink to the ground local boats are being used because the fishermen know the seafloor they can judge the weather and take advantage of currents [Music] this Beechmont hole on the shore has space for two cables yen scores is expecting the divers for the current connection works they have to bring up the tow rope that's pulling the cable onto the land the high-tech product from northern ham is facing its first test artillery slowly-slowly does a little attention after a few hours the boys show where the cable runs the weather remains calm and the cables are on their ideal course finally the last few meters to the beach Minh hole are overcome everything is going according to plan just bring it easy is it just watch it there's no kick okay looks good by the evening beach master course we'll have almost lost his voice he and lands a base as I hear on land it was very easy because it was only a short distance from the water line to the beach Minh hole that's the hole where the cable will be connected to the land cable in the beach Minh hole the cable is fitted with a plate and it's attached so it can't be pulled back out to sea hakim can cause anxiety the last stage of work in the water the divers separate the boys from the cable it will sink on to the flat seabed outside the harbor it will only be a few meters down before the Tillery can set off on its 90-mile installation trip from Malta to Sicily the measurement engineers have to give their okay the central control room on the Tulare has sent signals in the evening they arrive cleanly in the measuring Hut on land [Music] the lay on Tevin on day 4 yog Pok rant is calling his colleague from the German see cable endpoint center Norden the electric current in the cable has to be switched off mister in the near from the joint box B op C - why sign on Krypton ball TPS and ability power want animus on the name Vedas Karloff this plan also has to be adapted to reality the underwater robot wasn't able to grip the cable a sea anchor and a cutting tool are sent down [Music] we are just retrieving the cable but we still have a small problem it's buried quite deep under a sand dune at a depth of at least a meter or a meter and a half again and again the cable slips out of the hook finally it can be cut on the seafloor it is now clamped if you try to bring it up the tension increases and it could snap that would be dangerous for the people in the front we've closed it for that reason only one person can go there and that's me [Music] the whole ship is used to lift the several tons segment out of the seabed centimeter by centimeter this will take hours and then everything goes very quickly suddenly the Internet has a real location a defined error location in the World Wide Web [Music] [Music] not a single internet user along the 39,000 kilometer cable will notice anything at all of the work being done on the undersea cable that connects Europe to the Far East this place now has a name error location 33 a the exterior protection has been removed this cable has a conducting copper tube as well as a protective plastic coating then the fibers lie bare [Music] two fiber-optic pairs each of them for eight frequencies they are connected to the fibers of a replacement cable the technical term for this is splicing the splicing process looks like a surgical operation and it is one to a room below deck is the theater a dust free space isolated from the rest of the world where what are they precision engineers precision electricians in any case specialists are working with great concentration and steady hands the delicate fibers are welded to those of the replacement cable [Music] for 24 hours two teams of two people are at work they inspect each other's work because they can't do this job on their own after six hours it's finally time for a test the station on the mainland has sent a signal to the repaired section after a few tense minutes disappointment a further problem and now the whole operation again oh yes we'll have to start again Munir Marva we have to wait and see it could be that for some reason the measurement we got was incorrect but it looks like we'll be here for some time this afternoon for the first measurements that this measurement says there is a second problem so they have to carry on searching the television team then left the vessel the defect was found five days later yaagh pock runt photographed it and sent this image for this film via the internet as an email the problem a shunt fault a graze on the cable a short-circuit with the sea floor when the first transatlantic connection broke down in the 19th century it took seven years before it was successfully repaired yog pot grants excursion was over after just 14 days [Music]

Channel: wocomoDOCS

Views: 701,775

Rating: 4.7293992 out of 5

Keywords: Technology, Jürgen Ridder, Deutsche Telekom, Unterseekabel, Videoconference, Plolychaeta Aphrodita, FLAG Europe Asia, SEA‐ME‐WE 4, Flag Telecom Group, FALCON‐Cable, Andreas Tünnermann, Fraunhofer‐Institute, fibreglass, ERLANG, fiber optic cable, Hervé Desmeules, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, Godehard Walf, Klaus Hopf, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, Ronald Freund

Id: UnBRlXfYe18

Length: 43min 13sec (2593 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019