TAT-14 was the 14th consortium

transatlantic telecommunications 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 us ...

system. In operation from 2001 to 2020, it used

wavelength division multiplexing In fiber-optic communications, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is a technology which multiplexes a number of optical carrier signals onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (i.e., colors) of laser light. This techniqu ...

. The cable system was built from multiple pairs of fibres—one fibre in each pair was used for data carried in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. Although optical fibre can be used in both directions simultaneously, for reliability it is better not to require splitting equipment at the end of the individual fibre to separate transmit and receive signals—hence a fibre pair is used. TAT-14 used four pairs of fibres—two pairs as active and two as backup. Each fibre in each pair carried 16 wavelengths in one direction, and each wavelength carried up to an

STM-256 Synchronous optical networking (SONET) and synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) are standardized protocols that transfer multiple digital bit streams synchronously over optical fiber using lasers or highly coherent light from light-emitting diodes ...

(38,486,016 kbit/s as payload). The fibres were bundled into submarine cables connecting the United States and the European Union (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark) in a ring topology. By the time this cable went into operation, the expected '' long boom'' (term coined by ''Wired'' magazine) was already ending in the '' dot-com death''. The overinvestment in transcontinental

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 Hair is a protein filament that grows ...

capacity led to a financial crisis in private cable operators like

Global Crossing Global Crossing was a telecommunications company that provided computer networking services and operated a tier 1 carrier. It maintained a large backbone network and offered peering, virtual private networks, leased lines, audio and video co ...

. In the cables leak released by

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

, it is revealed that the landing point in Katwijk, the Netherlands is included in a

US Government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a feder ...

list of

critical infrastructure Critical infrastructure (or critical national infrastructure (CNI) in the UK) is a term used by governments to describe assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and economy – the infrastructure. Most commonly associated w ...

susceptible to

terrorist attack Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

. Use of the cable was ceased on December 15, 2020, shortly after the Havfrue cable, whose main trunk also lands at Blaabjerg, was lit in November 2020. In 2021 the permanent dismantling of the system was begun.

Cable failure

In November 2003, TAT-14 suffered two breaks within weeks of each other, first on the southern link between the US and UK, then on the link between France and the Netherlands which had been providing redundant service to the UK via the northern link through Denmark, resulting in disruption to Internet services in the United Kingdom. On May 19, 2014, preliminary reports from hosting provider

Digital Ocean Digital Ocean, Inc., was a maker of wireless products from 1992 to 1998. The company was founded in May 1992 by Jeffery Alholm and headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas. Several contracts with Apple Inc., AT&T, Aironet Wireless Communications (later ...

suggested that TAT-14 was the cause for the disrupted services between the EU and the US.

References

External links

TAT-14 Cable System
(archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Tat-14 Transatlantic communications cables Infrastructure completed in 2001 British Telecom buildings and structures AT&T buildings Deutsche Telekom Vodafone buildings and structures Verizon Communications Sprint Corporation KPN Orange S.A. Telenor Level 3 Communications KDDI SoftBank Group Telus Telefónica Rostelecom Science and technology in Cornwall Tata Communications 2001 establishments in Europe 2001 establishments in New Jersey 2020 disestablishments in Europe 2020 disestablishments in New Jersey