As Iran war threatens undersea cables in the Strait of Hormuz, is it time to rethink the internet?
When one of the world’s worst ever energy crises began in the Strait of Hormuz in February, few believed that their internet access – rather than their gas bill – would be the worst-affected aspect of daily life.
But lurking many thousands of metres beneath the oil ships being attacked by the Iranian navy lie a series of undersea cables that play a vital role in the global economy, helping to power our internet and keep the world connected.
Earlier this month, Tehran floated plans to impose tariffs on Strait of Hormuz submarine cables, warning that they were a vulnerable chokepoint for the region’s digital economy.
The Middle East is not the only region facing these concerns. In April, three Russian submarines conducted a covert operation over cables in waters north of the UK, although none were damaged. On Friday, the UK announced it is introducing stringent new laws to punish any saboteurs who deliberately damage undersea internet cables with a possible prison sentence.
China has also been accused by Taiwan of several attacks on undersea cables in the region. For the island, which relies on just 24 cables, this can pose a significant national security risk.
Undersea cables carry more than 99 per cent of all international digital data traffic, acting as an invisible backbone of the internet and facilitating emails, banking transactions, messaging and more.
But the so-called global network of undersea cables is more an assortment of “narrow corridors” through which the internet flows – including through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
The roughly 600 submarine cables are primarily owned and operated by some of the world’s largest private telecommunications companies, including Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, and other consortia. Modern ones use fibre-optic technology, with the cable delivering the information no wider than a human hair, sheathed in several layers of insulation and protection.
Data analysis company TeleGeography believes there are more than 1.5 million kilometres of submarine cables globally, reaching up to 20,000km in length.
They are installed by huge, specialised cable-laying ships, which unspool the cables, burying them under the seabed in shallow waters and laying them on the floor in deep waters. This is only done after the topography of the ocean floor on the route in question has been carefully mapped.
“Everyone knows where they are,” explains Tony O’Sullivan, CEO of global network provider RETN, which operates between Europe and Asia.
“The Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman, parts of the East China Sea, and the Strait of Dover are good examples. Given the volume of traffic that runs along these routes, if they do get affected, it would affect not [just] the edge of the internet backbone but a major conduit.”
Serious damage to the cables can cause significant problems for consumers, particularly businesses. Although the belief that cables break and the internet goes down at once is not strictly true – traffic will typically find another route – the speed of the services can degrade sharply.
A heavy load on the alternative cable routes means they become unstable, leading to unprocessed payments, feeds that don’t update, and messages that take longer to send.
