Later this month in Rome, telecommunication carriers from Europe, Africa
and Asia will meet to plan the world’s longest underwater fibre-optic cable.
Called FLAG – fibre-optic link around the globe – the cable will be 24 000
kilometres long and will carry up to 600 000 calls simultaneously on a route
running from Britain to Japan.
The cable will run through the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean. Fibre-optic cables already span the Atlantic and Pacific. The FLAG
cable, expected to cost more than $1 billion, would complete a fibre-optic
circuit of the globe.
