At Myrtle Beach State Park, the ocean is the obvious thing. The less obvious thing is a round metal cover near the beach. At the bottom of the stairs beneath it is a cable that runs to Argentina. In Part 1, Samanth Subramanian helped us see the ocean floor as a kind of highway. This time, we start where that highway comes ashore.
Jeff Wabik, chief technology officer at DC BLOX, explains that bringing a cable onto land is a site-selection problem. The seabed needs a gentle grade. The ground needs to be soft enough to bore through. The beach needs to be stable, and ships and anchors need to stay away. A beach sounds obvious until hotels occupy the beachfront. The cable cannot simply run through a building, so the route and the permits matter.
The beach manhole is only the first stop. The cable continues underground to a protected landing station, then joins a terrestrial route to Atlanta. Jeff compares the landing station to JFK Airport, where international traffic arrives before being sent in many directions. Inside the ocean cable, information travels as light through glass. That light needs amplification along the way, powered through copper conductors inside the cable. Google’s Firmina announcement gives more background on the cable’s route and design, while DC BLOX’s Myrtle Beach facility page shows how the landing station connects the subsea system to the Southeast.
From Myrtle Beach to Atlanta, a 470-mile fiber route passes through many jurisdictions. The hard part is not only digging a trench. It is the permits, crossings, inspections, and coordination. One small intermediate amplifier building is already too small, and Jeff is redesigning it before construction begins. That turns the episode from a cable story into a people story: electricians, crews, concrete workers, equipment designers, and everyone else who keeps the light moving. After the credits, we ask whether this is a bubble. Jeff has lived through the dot-com version, and his answer is more interesting than a simple yes or no.
Mentioned in this episode: Google’s Firmina subsea cable announcement, DC BLOX’s Myrtle Beach cable landing station, and Jeff Wabik’s DC BLOX profile.
Featuring Jeff Wabik, chief technology officer at DC BLOX.
