THE AMAZING MAYO TO NEW YORK 5500KM SUPER-CABLE

THE cable is more than 5,500km long, laid in one single length right across the Atlantic.

It cost $300million or €270million.

The cable has the capacity to carry all the data traffic between Europe and the US at any one time. That’s the equivalent of 1.6million ultra high-definition video channels running simultaneously. It can also carry one third of all the world’s phone calls simultaneously or more than 32million 4G wireless calls.

Despite this, the cable is just a few centimetres wide.

Bursts of data will cross the distance from Ireland to the US in just 0.05 of a second.

Inside the rubber link are a series of smaller fibre-optic cables.

Lightweight cables are used in deep water and laid directly on the sea floor, according to a carefully worked out route which avoids trenches, underwater hazards and shipwrecks.

In shallower water the cable is buried by a robotic undersea vehicle in a shallow trench and has thicker rubber ‘armouring’ to protect it from anchors and fishing nets.

There are just 20 fibre-optic cables spanning the Atlantic. A further 40 obsolete copper cables lie on the seabed, some dating back to the days of the telegraph 100 years ago.

The first cable to link Europe and the US was brought ashore in Valentia Island in Co. Kerry in 1858.

Telecommunications cables are laid by vessels which operate 24 hours a day – in this case laying the entire length in a single trip working 24 hours a day and laying 5km of cable each hour.

The cable itself is loaded on to the ship in a giant circular spool some 10metres in diameter.

The operating costs for a cable-laying vessel, including crew members, can typically exceed €100,000 per day.

If an issue arises with an undersea cable, the location of the fault is pinpointed by a calculation which involves measuring the amount of voltage at each end. The suspect section is then brought to the surface, is cut away and replaced by a new section of cable.