The NSA whistleblower below, William Binney, said something to the effect of... "if the U.S. was intending to only monitor calls with foreigners, then they would've placed their intercept equipment on the nodes where foreign telephone traffic entered the U.S." My understanding prior to this was that satellites had taken over this traffic long ago. Of course, I was way off...and of course, you already knew this :P But, I wikied it and got the exact numbers.
Wikipedia... "As of 2006, overseas satellite links accounted for only 1 percent of international traffic, while the remainder was carried by undersea cable. The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when (as noted above) multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break. Also, the total carrying capacity of submarine cables is in the terabits per second, while satellites typically offer only megabits per second and display higher latency. However, a typical multi-terabit, transoceanic submarine cable system costs several hundred million dollars to construct."
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