Comment by AnimalMuppet
6 months ago
But that's rather overstating the case, isn't it? If all these cables simultaneously break, we'd switch to Starlink (at much lower total bandwidth), and international communication would drop in volume, with the most valuable uses winning.
Millisecond-level currency trading would cease, but second- or minute-level trading would continue, and that would not dramatically destroy economies.
ATMs of foreign banks might stop working; local banks should continue.
Watching video from a foreign server would no longer be possible, but that's not the end of the world.
And so on. It would slow many things down, some things would stop, but it wouldn't be the end of modern civilization.
> we'd switch to Starlink (at much lower total bandwidth)
That's some kind of understatement, assuming that TFA is correct:
> Satellites would not be able to pick up even half a percent of the traffic.
I very much doubt that the trading systems that today rely on international data cables can be run via phones and voice communications, and I also wonder just how much of the phone system (even domestically within the USA) paradoxically relies in submarine cables.
> Satellites would not be able to pick up even half a percent of the traffic.
So? How much of that traffic is video? If you eliminate that, what percentage of the rest can satellite pick up?
I was not proposing that trading systems run via phones and voice. No, those are much less bandwidth-efficient than data. I was proposing that they continue to be run by data, just with lower frequency. (Will the global economy really collapse without HFT on currencies?)