PTAT-1

PTAT-1 was the first privately financed

transatlantic Transatlantic, Trans-Atlantic or TransAtlantic may refer to: Film * Transatlantic Pictures, a film production company from 1948 to 1950 * Transatlantic Enterprises, an American production company in the late 1970s * ''Transatlantic'' (1931 film), ...

fibre optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

telecommunications cable, which was completed in 1989, at a cost of US$400 million. It was maintained by Cable & Wireless (C&W) and Sprint/PSI, and connected

Manasquan, New Jersey Manasquan (, ) is a borough in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 5,938, an increase of 41 (+.7%) from the 2010 census count of 5,897, which ...

, United States with

Devonshire, Bermuda Devonshire Parish is one of the nine parishes of Bermuda. Originally named ''Cavendish Tribe'' and later Devonshire Tribe, for William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire (1552–1626). ''Devonshire Redoubt'', on Castle Island, one of the Castle Har ...

and

Ballinspittle Ballinspittle () is a village in County Cork, Ireland. It is in the barony of Courceys and lies about southwest of Kinsale, on the R600 road. It is near Garrylucas and Garrettstown Blue Flag beaches. The village is a community with new housin ...

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. A ...

, terminating at Brean,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, United Kingdom, for a distance of . The significance of PTAT-1 is that it broke the international telecommunication

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

held by

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

and

British Telecom BT Group plc (trade name, trading as BT and formerly British Telecom) is a British Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is th ...

(BT) for telecommunications between the US and UK. PTAT-1 was built by a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

of a small private US company, Private TransAtlantic Telecommunication System (PTAT Systems, founded as TelOptik in 1984) and

Cable & Wireless plc Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom (via subsidiary Mercury Communications). The company later off ...

of the UK. The submarine cable system and line terminal equipment was provided by

Standard Telephones and Cables Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd (later STC plc) was a British manufacturer of telephone, telegraph, radio, telecommunications, and related equipment. During its history, STC invented and developed several groundbreaking new technologies incl ...

(STC), and alarm and control system management by

International Computers Limited International Computers Limited (ICL) was a British computer hardware, computer software and computer services company that operated from 1968 until 2002. It was formed through a merger of International Computers and Tabulators (ICT), English Ele ...

(ICL). The US shore end was built by Lightwave Spectrum. The UK to US section of the cable was shut down just after 02:00 hours on 8 February 2004, as it was no longer considered financially viable by Cable & Wireless. Competitors to the cable had dropped their prices drastically after they re-emerged from

Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code) permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Such reorganization, known as Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is available to every business, whe ...

with little or no debts to service, something C&W was unable to compete with. This cable provided intelligent repeaters that counted bit errors which were reported in response to interrogation from a base station. It contained three fibre pairs which were used to provide two active channels. Each repeater included a base station-controlled cross-over data switch to swap traffic through a choice of two fibre pairs, the switch connections in successive repeaters enabled any desired connection to be made and provide a diversity path when required. Transatlantic communications cables Infrastructure completed in 1989 United Kingdom–United States relations Ireland–United Kingdom relations Ireland–United States relations 1989 establishments in New Jersey 1989 establishments in Bermuda 1989 establishments in Ireland 1989 establishments in England {{US-stub