Escher.gif (426 bytes)

History of the Atlantic Cable & Undersea Communications
from the first submarine cable of 1850 to the worldwide fiber optic network

Cable Signalling Speed and Traffic Capacity

The Atlantic Cable website often receives requests for historical data on signalling speed and traffic capacity of long distance cables, so I've summarized here some improvements in cables over the last 150 years. The majority of cables listed are Atlantic crossings to give consistency to the results.

Cable Year Speed or Capacity
Atlantic, Ireland-Newfoundland 1858 A few words per hour
Atlantic, Ireland-Newfoundland 1866 6 - 8 words per minute
Long cables with automatic transmitting equipment 1898 40 words per minute
Newfoundland-Azores 1928 2,500 characters per minute (~400 wpm)
Atlantic, TAT-1 1956 36 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-2 1959 48 telephone channels
Atlantic, CANTAT 1961 80 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-3 1963 138 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-4 1965 138 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-5 1970 845 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-6 1976 4,000 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-7 1978 4,000 telephone channels
Atlantic, TAT-8 1988 280 Mbits/s (40,000 telephone channels)
Atlantic, TAT-9 1992 2 x 565 Mbits/s (each 80,000 telephone channels equivalent)
Atlantic, TAT-10 1992 2 x 565 Mbit/s
Atlantic, TAT-11 1993 2 x 565 Mbit/s
Atlantic, TAT-12/13 1996 2 x 5 Gbit/s
Atlantic, TAT-14 2001 640 Gbit/s (9,700,000 telephone channels equivalent)
Atlantic, VSNL (TGN) 2001 2 x 2,520 Gbit/s

Return to the Atlantic Cables index page

Copyright © 2008 FTL Design

Last revised: 17 January, 2008

Return to Atlantic Cable main page

Research Material Needed

The Atlantic Cable website is non-commercial, and its mission is to make available on line as much information as possible.

You can help - if you have cable material, old or new, please contact me. Cable samples, instruments, documents, brochures, souvenir books, photographs, family stories, all are valuable to researchers and historians.

If you have any cable-related items that you could photograph, copy, scan, loan, or sell, please email me: billb@ftldesign.com