TAT-8, the first transoceanic fibre cable, enters service
The first fibre-optic cable across an ocean was completed, from Tuckerton in New Jersey to a branching unit off Europe and on to Widemouth Bay in England and Penmarc'h in France. It carried 280 Mbit/s on two working fibre pairs — about 40,000 telephone circuits, against 36 on TAT-1 thirty-two years earlier — with electronic regenerators, since the optical amplifier had been demonstrated only the previous year.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- TAT-8 · infrastructure · North Atlantic · not located
- The submarine optical repeater · technology · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
IEEE Milestones: the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable (TAT-1), 1956, and the transatlantic fibre-optic submarine cable (TAT-8), 1988
Supports the TAT-1 route (Gallanach Bay near Oban to Clarenville, Newfoundland), its 36 telephone circuits and its 25 September 1956 inauguration, and the TAT-8 route, its 280 Mbit/s on two working fibre pairs, its roughly 40,000 circuits and its entry into service on 14 December 1988. V55 verification basis: retrieved by search, not opened. One retrieved source gives 26 rather than 25 September 1956 for TAT-1 entering service, and this pack records that discrepancy instead of resolving it.
IEEE / Engineering and Technology History Wiki · Partly verified
IEEE Milestone records for TAT-1 (1956) and TAT-8 (1988), ethw.org
Recorded on TAT-8
- TAT-1 opens with 36 telephone circuits
- The erbium-doped fibre amplifier is demonstrated
- TAT-8, the first transoceanic fibre cable, enters service
- TAT-8 is lifted from the seabed
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.