An optical fiber submarine cable.

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BORIS HORVAT / AFP

  • A new telecommunications cable is being pulled in France and the United States on the Gironde coast.

  • It must pass under the square and the dunes thanks to a horizontal drilling carried out 20 meters underground.

  • It will respond to the doubling of traffic between Europe and North America every two years and to the unprecedented increase in traffic during periods of confinement with the health crisis.

It is an extraordinary operation.

So out of the ordinary that all the planets are perfectly aligned for it to come true.

And this Monday morning, that was unfortunately not the case.

Due to the still complicated weather conditions over the past few days in the South-West, divers were unable to connect a new giant transatlantic submarine cable to the Porge beach in Gironde.

They will do it very quickly in the next few days.

The small coastal town will then be linked directly to the United States by a 6,800 kilometer cable.

The deployment of such an infrastructure "remains an exceptional event" immediately recalls Carine Romanetti, head of the submarine heading department for Orange.

What is this cable?

It is a new generation telecommunications cable (optical fiber) which will provide a connection between the State of Massachusetts in the United States, Le Porge in France and Bude in England.

The French operator, which carries this project with Facebook and Vodafone, is responsible for connecting a sequence of 800 kilometers to a box in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

This cable the size of "a garden hose", specifies a technician, was manufactured in metropolitan France by the Alcatel Submarine Networks teams in the factories in Calais.

How do we install it?

The cable is first wound in the holds of a boat.

The latter then unwinds it for hundreds of kilometers, placing it on the ground before the cable undergoes "burial" as we approach the European or American continent on the other side of the river. 'Atlantic.

That is to say, it is buried in the sand at a depth of one or two meters thanks to a soil made by a plow.

The objective is for example to protect it from ship anchors.

The boat that brings the cable.

- Clément Carpentier / 20 Minutes

Finally, it must be connected to the earth.

For that, the boat stops about a kilometer from the coast.

It is from this limit that the French operator carried out "a horizontal drilling 20 meters underground to preserve the environment, the dune and the beach", explains Carine Romanetti.

This will be the mission of divers so that the cable is permanently connected.

Why is it fired today?

It is quite simply a question of renewing certain infrastructures which date from the early 2000s and which are reaching their limits.

The Atlantic Ocean is one of the busiest underwater routes in terms of connectivity.

On average, traffic between Europe and North America doubles every two years and this destination has experienced an unprecedented increase in traffic during periods of confinement with the health crisis.

The “Amitié” (in Gironde) and “Dunant” (in Vendée) mega cables are three times more powerful and will meet these needs for the next 20 years.

They will feed millions of people on the European continent.

When will it work?

This new 6,800 kilometer digital road will be operational in a year, at the start of 2022. It will supply millions of people on the European continent.

Transaction price: 250 million euros.

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