Live on the globe now: 712 tracked
This layer draws the world's submarine fiber-optic cables onto the globe: the actual undersea routes that carry the overwhelming majority of international internet traffic between continents. Each line is one cable system, traced along its real seabed path from landing point to landing point, so you can see how Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania are physically wired together — and where the chokepoints are.
The data comes from TeleGeography's open Submarine Cable Map (submarinecablemap.com), the most widely cited public reference for this network. We pull their cable geometry and metadata and refresh it daily; this is reference infrastructure that changes when systems light up or retire, not a second-by-second feed. Click any cable to inspect it: name, total length, the consortium of owners, its ready-for-service year, the number of landing points, and a link to TeleGeography's page for the full record.
It is one of roughly 29 live layers you can switch on over the same interactive Earth. It sits in the "digital" theme alongside data centers and live internet-outage layers, so you can overlay the physical cables against where networks are actually going dark. Spin, zoom, and click to dig in.
Data source: TeleGeography
From TeleGeography's open Submarine Cable Map (submarinecablemap.com), the standard public reference for the undersea network. We use their cable geometry and metadata, refreshed daily.
These undersea fiber-optic cables carry the vast majority of intercontinental internet traffic — far more than satellites. They are the physical backbone that links the world's networks across the ocean floor.
Yes. Click any cable to inspect its name, total length, owners, ready-for-service year, and number of landing points, with a link to TeleGeography's full record.
This layer shows the fixed physical infrastructure — the cables themselves. The internet-outages layer shows live network disruptions by country. Overlay both to compare the network against where it's failing.