How Fiber Super Sensing Could Save Subsea Links From Costly Cuts

Tiny Flaws in Glass Fiber Can Help Reveal Undersea Cable Threats

Warning systems cost far less than any single repair

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4 min read

Maurizio Arseni is a Geneva-based freelance contributor who reports about climate tech and the digital divide for IEEE Spectrum.

When undersea fiber optic cables occasionally break or are severed, a cable monitoring technology (called distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS) allows operators to sense the disruption, sometimes stopping an accident before it might even happen.

Source image: ASN