Features · 5 min read
Marseille: the quiet gateway between three continents
Once a secondary landing point, the French port is now one of the most important subsea hubs linking Europe, Africa and Asia.
By Mei-Lin Tan · Connectivity Analyst
Subsea Cables
Subsea Cables
The submarine fibre systems that carry the overwhelming majority of intercontinental internet traffic.
Last updated 14 Jun 2026
- Share of traffic
- 95%+
- intercontinental
- Capacity
- Hundreds of Tbps
- per modern system
More than 95% of intercontinental data travels through submarine cables — fibre systems laid across the ocean floor. A single modern cable can carry hundreds of terabits per second, and the global map of these routes shapes geopolitics, latency and resilience.
Who builds them
Historically built by telecom consortia, subsea systems are now increasingly financed by hyperscalers such as Google and Meta, reflecting the gravity of cloud and content traffic.