> Assuming the underwater cable itself is 10 times as expensive as regular cable, its about $150 million for 9000 km.

Still sounds really inexpensive when I consider it contains a large number of repeaters and is meant to stay at the bottom of the ocean.

Edit: Forgot to write, I haven't run the numbers myself but I enjoyed your reasoning here, you put a smile on my face :

> At 5 knots, it would take about 1000 hours to lay the deep sea part of the cable. If the ship costs $50k/hour to operate, that would be about $40 million. (I have no idea what it costs to operate these ships, but Google tells me that big cruise ships cost about that much to operate, and I'd guess that a cable laying ship is cheaper).