By definition, i'd imagine a landline call goes through cables "on land"...so how do we make these calls across seas and oceans etc? Are there thousands of "under-sea cables"? If there's a transatlantic cable to USA from UK...from where and to where does it start and stop? Does this mean that every country has 158 (159 minus itself) cables stemming from it somewhere; one for each country? Or just one or two HUGE ones?????
2006-10-13 03:54:59 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
There are indeed many (fairly huge) cables in the ocean.
But most "landline" calls go via satellite nowadays. "Landline" only means that the phone you are using is connected to a telephone cable (as opposed to a cellphone or a VoIP), not that the entire path between the two phones can be traced with a cable.
As for a cable per country... It's similar to the internet. Your computer doesn't have as many cables coming out of it as there are other computers in the world, yet it theoretically can talk to any of them. Your internet cable runs it a hub, where it connects to many other individual cables, this hub, as well as several otethers is connected to a bigger hub, etc., etc.
The phone network uses the same principle. Country-level hubs connect to region-level ones, those go up to multi-region hubs etc.
2006-10-13 04:10:38 · answer #1 · answered by n0body 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Earth Garden Landlines
2016-12-17 04:19:48 · answer #2 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are a few transatlantic telephone cables. The first one was completed in 1956, and there has been at least one in operation ever since, with many of the older ones being replaced with newer technology.
2006-10-13 03:59:03 · answer #3 · answered by DavidK93 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I agree with what everyone else has said. By "cable" keep in mind we mean a bundle of as many as 144 fiber optic cables. That's a lot of phone calls or web pages as once.
2006-10-13 05:14:41 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are undersea cables linking all continents, except Antarctica. There are many such cables, but there does not have to be one for each country since each cable can carry many messages at the same time.
2006-10-13 04:00:45 · answer #5 · answered by campbelp2002 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Not many underseas wires now. Today most calls are via satellite, but they're starting to lay fiber accross the oceans. Fibers are better than satellite, because you don't have the half second response delay, and you don't have to throw the whole fiber away and lay a new one if it breaks.
2006-10-13 10:03:17 · answer #6 · answered by Nomadd 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋