all 49 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 59 points 3 weeks ago* (13 children)

Connecting communities in the region. Also there’s a lot of minerals shipping in the area and they need internet

  • source
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [+] [S] -29 points 3 weeks ago* (12 children)

    But these communities are extremely small and isolated... No roads go there.. so their Internet doesn't connect anywhere...unless it's wireless and then in that case why lay an expensive undersea cable.. just make everything wireless

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 57 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    You’re looking at a map of undersea cables. You can’t see the terrestrial cables that connects to one or more of those locations. They are not an isolated “intranet” but connected to the internet.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 37 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

    Why ask if you won’t accept the answer?

    I found this https://krg.ca/en-CA/assets/Council/2024/May/EAUFON.pdf which includes the terrestrial uplinks that do in fact exist.

    Wireless has really limited range at high speeds. It needs to be high frequency to handle high speeds and high frequency is interrupted by mist, to say nothing of snow or rain, and high frequency also must be line of sight and simply doesn’t cover much distance. They would need to put up a tower roughly 1/4 as often as a wire carrying pole for much less reliability and much less capacity. Wireless is almost never the correct answer to a fixed connection.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [+] [S] -9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Thanks for finding that ...it's funny that part of their plan is these cable...plus star link

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    Arguably the suspicious cables aren’t on the public maps.

    It’s a little confusing but I think that they are putting a starlink ground station there to offset some of the cost of the fibre network, and until fiber is finished, people can use starlink.

    It’s really unfortunate that musk owns Starlink, but this remote community proves that fibre is a reasonable option if there’s emphasis put on it. Wireless should be a last resort and satellite should be well behind that.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago*

    It connects to those cables you saw. Then to the wider internet.

    Wireless is hilariously power inefficient. You'd need massive cell towers everywhere with unlimited data, that are still connected to cables at the tower.

    At a certain point its cheaper to lay a smaller power cable, and an internet cable, than a massive power cable to do point to point wireless.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 32 points 3 weeks ago

    Connecting tiny, remote populations to the rest of the world, perchance? That sounds like a good enough use of my tax dollars on its face.

  • source
  • [–] 27 points 3 weeks ago

    Low pop or not people still need to be able to communicate and that includes sea vessels and aircraft.

  • source
  • [–] 10 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Many comments in here gave ample, good and serious answers that overlooked completely the great potential for silly jokes.

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    You mean like "Look it gets very cold, and there's a lot of snow for three quarters of the year, and a girl's got to put herself through college one way or another."

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    I would almost guarantee that they're SURTASS cables

    Undersea hydrophones for tracking submarines.

  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Oh that's a good shout. Never thought about that.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    The only reason I thought about it was because I was a SONAR tech in the Navy and had friends in IUSS and SURTASS. Long-range passive SONAR like that is fascinating.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    I suppose Canada would want (and probably has) these to surveil the bay. I doubt their military installations would be on most maps of undersea cables.

    I would guess it's fiber optic cables to provide telecom access to remote communities though. It's likely a lot cheaper and easier to run undersea cables there than it would be to run thousands of kilometers of cables overland through remote wilderness and then maintain them when they're inevitabily damaged.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago

    It looks like that peninsula is a national park with very rugged terrain, and that route might be the only way to get the towns connected at all.

  • source
  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)
  • [+] -13 points 3 weeks ago (17 children)
  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    That’s completely unnecessary. Don’t be rude.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [+] -7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [+] [S] -13 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

    The cables are isolated from the rest of the world

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [+] -5 points 3 weeks ago* (12 children)
  • [+] [S] -12 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

    They literally don't connect to anywhere else

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 11 child comments
  • [–] 18 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    If the map you're using is just underwater cables, that still leaves cables on land as connection sources

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [+] [S] -14 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    There are no roads to these communities from anywhere...zo there wouldn't be any land cables ...well because there are no roads

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Even if there's no roads, there's likely power lines. In some areas, they distribute the power underwater. It could very well be that they ran the network alongside the power.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [+] [S] -8 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    There are no power lines to these places.

    They use local diesel generators for power.

    These places are as remote and isolated as it gets... I'm just trying to figure out why and expensive undersea cable was put in place for about 8000 people that doesn't connect to anywhere... And if it does it's wireless... So why not make the whole thing wireless fro the start

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    With this being a map of undersea cables, one of the nodes on those lines likely connects to the terrestrial network. With how remote and shitty to build on a lot of that land is, laying the cables undersea may have actually been faster and cheaper than laying them on land.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [+] [S] -14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    There are no roads to these communities though.

    So I assume there are no land cables connected

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • load more comments (-1 replies)