cold, dark depths of the Atlantic to
her internet service provider’s terminal. It’s a short hop from there
to her desktop. At this time, there
are 278 active cables. Together,
they loop around for some 555,000
miles under the sea, linking all the
continents, barring Antarctica and
a few island nations. (For perspective -- Mount Everest stands five
miles tall). And it is this aquatic
grid that powers the overwhelming
bulk of our internet.
While on the go, it can be reached
on a smartphone through a cell
phone tower. Reception is excellent at a Starbucks, in New York’s
Time’s Square, but as you move
away from bustling urban pockets,
it tends to get sluggish and patchy,
until it dwindles to naught. Driving
along a rural section of Asia’s Grand
Trunk Road, your device will receive
hardly any signal at all. Worse still,
what if you’re in an area in the middle of nowhere, where there’s not
even a radio mast and an aerial in
the vicinity? Then, the only way to
log on is by means of telecom satellites. These are pieces of school
bus-size machinery that are placed
Cell Phone Tower
in what is known as a ‘geostationary orbit’. As Earth spins, they spin
with it, in tandem, 22,236 miles
above the surface, in a circular
path, like a hoopla hoop, along the
plane of Earth’s midriff.
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