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Hastily snapped on a camera-phone, the picture below shows where the internet feeds into Britain from New York. The super-high-speed cable is now hidden under six feet of Cornish beach  -  which is just as well, because if it were discovered and damaged, the entire web in Britain could turn to treacle. Warren Pole reports on the fragile network of ocean cabling that keeps the modern world turning
Where the internet feeds into Britain from New York

It's ironic, then, what children building sandcastles on the Cornish beach in this main picture would find if they dug down six feet. There they would see the Atlantic's newest internet connection - lasers fire the signal along the cable at the speed of light.

Most people think the internet is beamed around the planet by satellites. In fact, 90 per cent of global internet traffic is carried by a vast cable network, thousands of miles of which snake under the oceans.

A cable-laying vessel lies off the Cornish coast as engineers work on the cable trench
You don't want to look down the cable. If it was on, it could burn your retina out in seconds
How the world webs
Ocean cabling
This remote footnote of Britain's coastline is one of the most important and powerful telecommunications hubs in the world
An ROV searches out undersea cables for repair
A plough, which makes cable trenches in the seabed, is lowered into the water
Inside Apollo's high-speed cable