has increased over the years; in 2014 unrepeated cables of up to in length were in service; however these require unpowered repeaters to be positioned every 100 km. The rising demand for these fibre-optic cables outpaced the capacity of providers such as AT&T. Having to shift traffic to satellites resulted in lower-quality signals. To address this issue, AT&T had to improve its cable-laying abilities. It invested $100 million in producing two specialized fibre-optic cable laying vessels. These included laboratories in the ships for splicing cable and testing its electrical properties. Such field monitoring is important because the glass of fibre-optic cable is less malleable than the copper cable that had been formerly used. The ships are equipped with thrusters that increase manoeuvrability. This capability is important because fibre-optic cable must be laid straight from the stern, which was another factor that copper-cable-laying ships did not have to contend with. Originally, submarine cables were simple point-to-point connections. With the development of submarine branching units (SBUs), more than one destination could be served by a single cable system. Modern cable systems now usually have their fibres arranged in a self-healing ring to increase their redundancy, with the submarine sections following different paths on the ocean floor. One reason for this development was that the capacity of cable systems had become so large that it was not possible to completely back up a cable system with satellite capacity, so it became necessary to provide sufficient terrestrial backup capability. Not all telecommunications organizations wish to take advantage of this capability, so modern cable systems may have dual landing points in some countries (where back-up capability is required) and only single landing points in other countries where back-up capability is either not required, the capacity to the country is small enough to be backed up by other means, or having backup is regarded as too expensive. A further redundant-path development over and above the self-healing rings approach is the mesh network whereby fast switching equipment is used to transfer services between network paths with little to no effect on higher-level protocols if a path becomes inoperable. As more paths become available to use between two points, it is less likely that one or two simultaneous failures will prevent end-to-end service. As of 2012, operators had "successfully demonstrated long-term, error-free transmission at 100 Gbps across Atlantic Ocean" routes of up to , meaning a typical cable