City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

APPENDIX B 277
Spring and Telecom bubble deflates and stocks tumble. Layoffs
Summer 2001: begin.
December 2001: TAT-8 submarine cable fails. It is later retired because
repairs would be too expensive and other
transatlantic cables have extra capacity.
July 21, 2002: WorldCom files for bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy
in U.S. corporate history.
January 2003: Total transatlantic transmission capacity in use is
2700 billion bits per second, about 5000 times
that of TAT-8. Total potential capacity is 12,300
billion bits per second.