Disruption of underseas cables can bring financial system to a standstill

Fiber-optic submarine cables are the lifeblood of U.S. carriers’ global business. Aside from our land-based connections with Canada and Mexico, more than 95 percent of U.S. international traffic – voice, video, Internet and data – travels over 38 submarine cables, each the diameter of a garden hose. Without these cables, current satellite capacity could carry only 7 percent of the total U.S. international traffic.

Fiber-optic submarine cables are the international digital trade routes of the 21st century. And thus, any disruptions to the submarine cable global network can have significant impact on the flow of digital information around the world, with severe consequences for the world economy. As one official from the Federal Reserve noted in referring to submarine cable networks, “When the communication networks go down, the financial sector does not grind to a halt, it snaps to a halt.”ⁱ