Undersea cable that made global internet possible is being pulled from ocean

The first fibre-optic cable ever laid across an ocean, the historic TAT-8, is being pulled from the Atlantic seabed after lying dormant for more than two decades.

The cable will be recycled in South Africa.

TAT-8 (Trans Atlantic Telephone 8) stretched around 6,000 kilometres between the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.

The cable marked humanity’s leap into the fibre-optic age as it carried its first traffic on December 14, 1998.

Experts are replacing the cable due to a crackly voice with pulses of light that could carry 280 million bits per second.

AT&T, British Telecom, and France Telecom built the cable that reached within just 18 months.

The repair is made by Subsea Environmental Services, one of the three companies worldwide specialising in cable recovery and recycling.

With the use of its diesel-electric ship, the MV Maasvliet, the company started its operations last year. Already by August, the team had managed to bring 1,012 kilometers of cable to the Portuguese port of Leixoes.

The cable will now be processed by Mertech Marine in South Africa, where it will be converted into steel, copper, and two types of polyethylene. The copper, which is of high quality, is in high demand given that the International Energy Agency forecasts a shortage of the product in the next decade.