Australians rely on underwater cables to connect us to the internet, but most people have never seen the span of the network or how it works, until now.
9News has been given an exclusive insight into the 400,000 kilometre network of fibre optic cables that run on the sea floor, capable of processing 200,000,000 calls while connecting residents from Sydney to Perth to the internet.
Telstra operates the subsea cable system, monitoring them for physical damages or issues as they span the globe.
"The biggest threat is really physical damage and that's why we do what we do. It's much harder these days to hack into cables," Telstra Technology Development Innovation Executive Channa Seneviratne said.
Because the cables are underwater, any physical damage could take up to a week to fix, according to Networks Principal Philip Murphy.
"If the water is eight kilometres deep it can take eight hours to get the grappling hook to the bottom, so it's no quick fix."
The subsea cables are extremely important for Australia's digital network, with 99 per cent of digital content coming from the subsea cable network, according to Seneviratne.
The cables are tiny but mighty. Their predecessors from the 80s, coaxial cable, were only capable of processing 1000 calls at one time.
"They're so tiny, it's remarkable. I've been doing this stuff for decades and it just amazes me how much the technology has advanced from this (coaxial) to that (fibre optic)," told 9News.
In October, the Australian Government made a $100 million deal with the United States and Google to run undersea cables to at least eight Pacific Island Nations.
