TAT-8 was the 8th

transatlantic communications cable A transatlantic telecommunications cable is a submarine communications cable connecting one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, each cable was a single wire. After mid-century, coaxial cable came into use ...

and first transatlantic

fiber-optic cable A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with ...

, carrying 280 Mbit/s (40,000 telephone circuits) between the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

. It was constructed in 1988 by a consortium of companies led 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 ...

France Télécom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 5 ...

, 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 ...

AT&T Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

developed the technologies used in the cable. The system was made possible by optical amplifiers acting as repeaters with advantages over the electrical repeaters of former cables. They were less costly and could be at greater spacing with less need for associated hardware and software. It was able to serve the three countries with a single transatlantic crossing with the use of an innovative branching unit located underwater on the

continental shelf A continental shelf is a portion of a continent that is submerged under an area of relatively shallow water, known as a shelf sea. Much of these shelves were exposed by drops in sea level during glacial periods. The shelf surrounding an island ...

off the coast of Great Britain. The cable lands in

Tuckerton, New Jersey Tuckerton is a borough in Ocean County, New Jersey, United States, named for founder Ebenezer Tucker (1758–1845), and was a port of entry, but not the third Port of Entry in the United States, as is often described.Stemmer, Peter H"The Port of ...

, USA,

Widemouth Bay Widemouth Bay ( kw, Porth an Men) is a bay, beach and small village on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England, UK. It is about 3 miles (5 km) south of Bude. This stretch of coast is steeped in the smuggling history of times before, and ...

, England, UK, and

Penmarch Penmarch (, ) is a commune in the Finistère department of Brittany, northwestern France.optical fiber 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 ...

s, a revolution in telecommunications. The system contained two working pairs of optical fibers; a third was reserved as a spare. The signal on each optical fiber was modulated at 295.6 Mbit/s (carrying 20 Mbit/s of traffic) and fully regenerated in equipment placed in pressure housings separated by about 40 km of cable. There were several problems with the early reliability of this cable during its first two years of operation. The cable was buried on the continental shelf on the European and the American side of the ocean. The burial was largely effective, and the cable issues were primarily related to manufacturing defects. AT&T laid a trial optical cable in the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...

in 1985. This cable did not have an electrical screen and was attacked by sharks. It was never proved whether these attacks were due to the sharks sensing the electrical radiation from the cable or the vibration of the cable moving on the sea floor where it might have been suspended, or a combination of both. TAT-8 did not have the screen conductor over the vast majority of its length, as the threat of shark attack was deemed to be small over the majority of the route. Because the Canary Island cable was the first fiber-optic cable and not a

coaxial cable Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric ( insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a p ...

, the electrical interference shielding for the high voltage supply lines was removed. This removal did not affect the fiber, but it did cause feeding frenzies in sharks that swam nearby. The sharks would then attack the cable until the voltage lines killed them. This caused numerous, prolonged outages. Eventually, a shark shielding was developed for the cable and was available for TAT-8.

PTAT-1 PTAT-1 was the first privately financed transatlantic fibre optic 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 Jers ...

, the next cable to go in the Atlantic was put in with the shark shielding across its entire length; the added reliability provided by this shield has not been fully evaluated. The system was manufactured by a consortium of three established submarine system suppliers: AT&T,

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 ...

and Alcatel. The idea was that each manufacturer would manufacture part of the system, so French technology procured by France Télécom would land in France, US technology in America procured by AT&T and British technology procured by BT in the UK. The systems were designed to interoperate although the regenerator supervisory systems were all proprietary. The transition between one supplier to another supplier's regenerators was achieved using a "mid-span meet". AT&T was appointed the integration coordinator and integration trials were held in

Freehold, New Jersey Freehold, New Jersey may refer to: * Freehold Borough, New Jersey, the county seat of Monmouth County * Freehold Township, New Jersey Freehold Township is a township in Monmouth County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The township is both a r ...

Impact

In 1989, with the new available capacity due to the TAT-8 cable, IBM agreed to fund a dedicated T1 link between

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

and

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...

, which was completed in February 1990. It greatly increased the connectivity between the American and European portions of the early

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. This allowed

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...

a high-speed, direct and open connection to the

NSFNET The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was a program of coordinated, evolving projects sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1985 to 1995 to promote advanced research and education networking in the United States. The p ...

, which greatly aided the first demonstrations of the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

ten months later. It was also crucial, along with the collapse of the

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...

at the same time, to the acceptance of

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

protocols in Europe.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tat-08 AT&T buildings British Telecom buildings and structures France–United Kingdom relations France–United States relations History of the Internet History of telecommunications in France History of telecommunications in the United Kingdom History of telecommunications in the United States Infrastructure completed in 1988 Orange S.A. Transatlantic communications cables United Kingdom–United States relations 1988 establishments in England 1988 establishments in France 1988 establishments in New Jersey 2002 disestablishments in England 2002 disestablishments in France 2002 disestablishments in New Jersey