johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us (John R. Levine) (03/01/90)
I have a beach house in Harvey Cedars NJ, a small town on a barrier island about 30 miles north of Atlantic City. Two blocks south of my house, at each end of the street (east and west ends, that is) there are large AT&T signs warning us that there is a buried transcontinental cable and awful things will happen to anyone who digs without talking to them first. Since the only thing to the east is the ocean, I presume this is one of the transatlantic cables. Anybody have an idea which one? It's not TAT-8, that leaves from Tuckerton which is about 10 miles south. The mainland town across from us where the cable makes landfall is Barnegat, if that's any help. There's an old VLF antenna array nearby. Speaking of TAT-8, there's an article in the current Data Communications describing all of the trouble they're having with it. TAT-8 is the first fiber-optic transoceanic cable. When they were doing the trials, they had incredible shark problems, for some reason sharks found fiber cable delicious. Perhaps they used it as dental floss. They finally fixed that by wrapping it in something that tastes awful, and laid the thing all the way across the ocean. The western end, as noted above, is in Tuckerton, the eastern end forks underwater and goes to Penmarch, France and Widemouth, England. The problem is that the French branch for some reason keeps being accidentally cut by fishing trawlers. Evidently it's not buried as well as it should be. There are 108 repeaters every 70 km powered by a 7 KV circuit. Unfortunately, anytime they do any work on the cable, they have to power down the whole thing to avoid electrocuting the repairmen, which means that each time they fish up and fix the French branch, the undamaged English branch is turned off, and the repair process takes several days. Backup satellite circuits are offered, but customers are not pleased. Regards, John Levine, johnl@esegue.segue.boston.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|lotus}!esegue!johnl
jthomp@hosaka.Central.Sun.COM (Jim Thompson) (03/18/90)
Responding to John R. Levine's question, "Name That Undersea Cable," posted Thu, 1 Mar 90: >.." Two blocks south of my house, at each end of the street (east and >west ends, that is) there are large AT&T signs warning us that there >is a buried transcontinental cable and awful things will happen to >anyone who digs without talking to them first. Since the only thing >to the east is the ocean, I presume this is one of the transatlantic >cables. Anybody have an idea which one?" There are several signs that say much the same thing ('transcontinental' even!) running up the street outside where I work/live. (No, I don't live at work, usually.) I'm in Dallas, Tx. No ocean. Jim Thompson - Network Engineering - Sun Microsystems - jthomp@central.sun.com Charter Member - Fatalistic International Society for Hedonistic Youth (FISHY) "Confusing yourself is a way to stay honest." -Jenny Holzer