A mysterious issue arose in the vast undersea canyon known as the Bottomless Hole.
Internet cables were failing one after another in a seabed so deep that no human has ever explored it.
This disruption caused life in cities above to come to a standstill.
One morning last March, millions of people in West Africa woke up to find themselves without internet access.
Hospitals couldn’t access patient records, businesses struggled to pay wages, and individuals were left staring at loading screens for hours on end.
The panic was palpable as people felt disconnected from the world around them.
‘Connecting,’ the wheel icon promised, but it failed to deliver for many hours and even days for some.
The Trou Sans Fond
< p Class = " G - text Svelta - urmhfI "> Despite its name, the Trou Sans Fond — French for Bottomless Hole — is not actually bottomless. It’s just incredibly deep. < p Class = " G - text Svelta - urmhfI "> This chasm off Ivory Coast starts with a steep drop of nearly 3,000 feet near the coastline. < P Class = " G - text Svelta - urmhfI "> At depths of up to two miles below sea level lies a network of cables that provide vital internet services across West Africa. These cables are essential lifelines for emerging economies with limited connectivity options. < P Class = " G - text Svelta - urmhfI "> While most people take the internet for granted as an indispensable tool, they often overlook its physical infrastructure: vast networks of underwater cables spanning continents and oceans. < P Class = " G - text Svelta - urmhfI "> That is until something goes wrong… like on March 14th when multiple cables at the bottom of Trou Sans Fond started malfunctioning one after another. This outage served as a stark reminder that we are all interconnected through these hidden networks beneath us. A city in Ivory Coast , just months before losing internet connectivity . Joao Silva / The New York Times Jennifer Counter , Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council , remarked : “ The more we rely on our phones , the more we forget how everything is connected . But there’s always a cable somewhere . ” Some individuals are acutely aware of this fact . When underwater cables fail , it falls upon them to retrieve them from ocean depths , repair them , and restore data flow once again . Following this incident at Trou Sans Fond ‘s base , Léon Thévenin – a repair ship stationed in Cape Town – geared up…
2024-11-30 10:22:05
Original source: www.nytimes.com
