The Egyptian cable land crossing

Assembled from 29 blocks · 1 evidence · 30 related

1. Story
2. The stretch of Egyptian ground, roughly from the Gulf of Suez to the Mediterranean coast west of Alexandria, where the cables between Europe and Asia leave the sea, travel overland in buried terrestrial ducts, and go back into the water. It exists because the alternative is Africa: the Suez isthmus is the only short path between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and a cable, unlike a ship, cannot use the canal itself in any straightforward way, so the systems land at stations on the Red Sea coast — Zafarana and Suez among them — and re-enter at Abu Talat and Alexandria on the Mediterranean. Retrieved analyses describe on the order of ten landing stations and at least ten terrestrial routes across the country, all under the control of the national operator, and estimate that more than 90 per cent of Europe–Asia communications traffic passes this way. That makes a single national carrier in a single country a load-bearing element of the world's data infrastructure, with the commercial consequences one would expect — transit fees, and long-running complaints about them — and the political ones too. The crossing is also the exact place where the Journey's two halves meet: the internet is not merely on the seabed, it comes ashore and walks across a desert.
3. Knowledge
4. Alexandria
5. The Red Sea cable corridor
6. The Egyptian cable land crossing
7. Telecom Egypt
8. Connections
9. Porthcurno cable station
10. SEA-ME-WE 5
11. The Red Sea cable corridor
12. Alexandria
13. Telecom Egypt
14. SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service
15. SEA-ME-WE 5
16. The cable chokepoint
17. The Egyptian cable land crossing
18. SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service
19. A sinking ship's anchor severs Red Sea cables
20. SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
21. Christianity
22. The Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum)
23. Latin as an Administrative Language
24. Battle of Actium
25. Dedication of Constantinople
26. The Egyptian cable land crossing
27. The Egyptian cable land crossing
28. Evidence
29. Supports the account of the Egyptian land crossing: on the order of ten landing stations and ten or more terrestrial routes under a single national operator, roughly sixteen systems along the Red Sea, and the estimate that more than 90 per cent of Europe–Asia communications traffic crosses Egypt. V55 verification basis: retrieved in summary, not opened. These are ANALYST ESTIMATES, not measurements — the same retrieved material gives Egypt's share of global traffic as anywhere between about 17 and 30 per cent, which shows how wide the uncertainty is — and this pack attributes them rather than asserting them.