The world’s first transatlantic fiber-optic cable is being ripped up after 37 years on the sea floor — TAT-8 to be removed after entering service in 1988, broke in 2002
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Subsea Environmental Services is currently hauling TAT-8, the first fiber-optic cable ever laid across the Atlantic Ocean, off the seabed near Portugal, according to a WIRED feature published this week. Built by AT&T, British Telecom, and France Telecom, the cable entered service on December 14, 1988, and was taken out of operation in 2002 after developing a fault too expensive to repair. It has sat on the ocean floor for more than two decades.
TAT-8 — short for Trans-Atlantic Telephone 8 — was the eighth transoceanic cable system across the Atlantic, but the first to transmit traffic using optical fibers rather than copper. Its capacity was exhausted within 18 months of launch, which effectively proved the model for every major undersea cable that followed. By 2001, the TAT series had reached number 14. At its launch, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov addressed audiences in Paris and London via video link from New York, calling it "this maiden voyage across the sea on a beam of light."
The recovery operation is being carried out by the MV Maasvliet, a new diesel-electric vessel on only its fourth voyage since leaving drydock in January 2025. The crew has been contending with an early hurricane season, with storms Dexter and Erin having forced the ship off course, meaning it collected less cable than planned. The cable itself has to be coiled by hand in the ship's hold, as fiber-optic cable can't be machine-coiled without risking damage to the glass fibers inside.
Despite fiber-optic transmission replacing copper as the signal medium, TAT-8's cable still contains substantial amounts of high-quality copper used in its power and structural components. The International Energy Agency has projected that copper supplies could fall by 30% within a decade if new sources don't keep pace with manufacturing demand, making thousands of kilometers of recovered cable a welcome source of the metal. The cable's steel will be repurposed as fencing, while its polyethylene sheathing will be sent to a facility in the Netherlands to be pelletized for non-food-grade plastics.
TAT-8 is far from the only retired cable still on the seabed. Of the estimated 2 million kilometers of decommissioned subsea cable worldwide, most have never been recovered. Subsea Environmental Services is one of only three companies globally that specialize entirely in cable recovery and recycling, and operations like this one clear established routes for new cables rather than disturbing untouched sections of the ocean floor.
The Bell Labs facility in Holmdel, New Jersey, where the underlying technology was developed and tested, is now a mixed-use complex called Bell Works. It’s perhaps better known today as the filming location for Lumon Industries' headquarters in the Apple TV+ series Severance. During renovation, workers found 18 kilometers of early TAT-8 sea trial cable in the basement.
Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
