comment by
Helmut Martin-Jung
The nerve fibers of the modern world are as thin as a human hair: glass fibers. Data whiz along at the speed of light, in the oceans as well as on land. An unbelievable amount of data can flow through a single cable strand, which is hardly thicker than a power cable – or not. That is when the worst case scenario occurs and a ship tears off a cable with its anchor or a construction machine cuts through one. This is what happened this Wednesday at a train station on the northern outskirts of Frankfurt. But while data traffic can usually be diverted via other routes without any problems in the event of a sea cable fiasco, the broken cable in Frankfurt immediately paralyzed all flight operations at Lufthansa.