The European Union is planning the construction of an undersea Internet cable in the Black Sea to mitigate their vulnerability to spying and sabotage. The cable will improve Internet connectivity to Georgia. The cable would also be an alternative to the ones running through Russia.
The increasing importance of the Internet has led countries around the world to rethink their approach to Internet infrastructure, since the Internet it is currently facilitated by cables run under the sea which can be sabotaged or tapped to steal data.
The primary reason undersea Internet cables are needed is to connect countries to each other overseas. On land, cities and buildings are connected to the Internet by cables as well. The infrastructure is unfortunately costly to install. The new Baltic cable is expected to cost €45 million. While the purpose of the cable was originally to improve connectivity to Georgia, the war in Ukraine has increased the urgency of it due to reliance on Russian cables.
The rise of low-Earth orbit satellite Internet services like Starlink is helping to provide Internet access to regions where dependence on cables is not even an option (for example, remote areas in which ISPs won’t run Internet cables). It has also been useful during times of war when Internet infrastructure went down.
