Fibre cable In the Gulf of Mexico, BP has laid a 1300km cable which connects all of its platforms. The cables provide 2,500 times the bandwidth of a satellite connection. “The cable has proved particularly useful in hurricanes,” he says. “We have 20:20 vision of what goes on in the platforms,” he said. “We’re down manned, but we can still see everything, we know everything. We know if anything has happened and we can start to plan a recovery. We’re the only company that has that capability in the Gulf.” The system is very helpful for people actually working on the platforms. “You can use software and it downloads instantly,” he said. Remote drilling In Indonesia, drilling engineers in Jakarta watch real time drilling data from the field operation 2,000 miles away in West Papua. “Having this real time connectedness between the field team and experts in the office really does improve how people work together,” he said.
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In light of the recent announcements by the Obama administration easing the restrictions on submarine cables between the USA and Cuba, it only seems right to look back in this edition at the Havana to Key West cable systems that are arguably as important to the development of the submarine cable industry as the pioneering Dover to Calais systems of 1850 and 1851.
In 1921, AT&T joined with the Cuban Telephone Company (an ITT company) to form the Cuban American Telephone and Telegraph Company. The new company purchased three coaxial cables to connect Key West to Havana. These were the first ever coaxial cables deployed for submarine cable use, and were manufactured and installed by the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company (Telcon). They went into service on 11 April 1921.
The idea of a cable between Cuba and Florida was first put forward by a group of Cuba-based Spanish In 1928, Bell System (parent of AT&T) business men in the early 1860s. made its first proposal to the British Unfortunately, despite them General Post Office for a transatlantic obtaining the necessary concessions telephone cable. Bell Laboratories and completing a route survey, the had come up with a new cable design, project failed to get off the ground. but as there was no serous submarine After the end of the American Civil cable manufacturing capability in War, however, two American soldiers the USA, the manufacturing rights rekindled interest. In 1864, Captain were offered to Telcon. Amazingly, James Alexander Scrymser applied Telcon turned this opportunity down to the Florida State Legislature for and the design was then offered to permission to land cables at Punta the German company Norddeutsche Rassa in Florida, and was granted Seekabelwerke. Eventually, they rights for twenty years. At the same produced a 111nm coaxial cable which time, General William Farrar Smith, was laid in 1930 between Havana and the President of the newly formed Key West. The system went into service International Ocean Telegraph on 6 June 1931. Bell Laboratories Company (IOTC), was granted the continued their development through cable landing rights in Cuba for forty the depression years and came up years. An Act of Congress was passed with a flexible repeater design which on 5 May 1866 giving IOTC the sole was complete by 1941. But, due to the right to handle traffic between Cuba intervention of WWII, it wasn’t until and the USA for fourteen years. Two 1950 that a full scale trial of a long cable systems were installed between haul system could be implemented. Havana and Key West, one in 1867 Twin coaxial cables were laid between and another the following year. In Havana and Key West, each cable 1873, the Western Union Telegraph AT&T promotional brochure containing three, unidirectional Company took a two-thirds majority flexible repeaters. Simplex Wire and for the new service holding in IOTC, and a new Havana Cable manufactured the polyethylene to Key West Cable was laid. Two more cables were (invented by ICI in 1933) dielectric coaxial cable and added in 1899 and 1917. the six repeaters were supplied by Western Electric. The systems provided 24 x 4kHz voice channels and was the test bed for TAT-1. Images courtesy of www.Atlantic-Cable.com