The topics of this chapter range from the sea bed to the home, yet one theme is retained; all of these rules relate to how cables are run, protected, and maintained. The ?rst telecom ?ber cable was not lit until April 22, 1977 (between Long Beach and Artesia), and it wasnt until 1988 that theTAT-8 crossed the Atlantic, yielding 40,000 good telephone connections 1 (and over 1000 times provided by the ?rst copper cable). Today, for exam-ple, an advanced ?ber transmitting 184 wavelength channels at 40 gigabits per second can carry more than 90 million phone conversations (enough to satisfy severalteenagers)..