Cable, Fiber Optic, Undersea, Single Armor

Satellites provide unprecedented flexibility in passing information around the world. But they compete with and complement another technology for international communications: fiber optic cables laid beneath oceans and connecting the world's major land masses. Fiber optic cables can carry more information, more quickly than satellites, but they concentrate service to the most heavily populated regions of the world. This section of cable represents late 1990s technology. Note the thin filaments at the center of the cable; these are the fiber optic strands that transmit communications.

Donated by Tyco International, Limited, Simplex Technologies, the manufacturer, to the Museum in 1999.