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Seventeen major telecommunications companies signed a pact Friday to build a $500 million undersea fiber optic cable between Southeast Asia and the United States they claim will be relatively safe from earthquakes and tsunamis.

The link will offer "a timely increase in both the capacity and diversity of Internet links between Asia and the U.S., bearing in mind the disruptions caused by the recent Taiwan earthquake," Abdul Wahid Omar, chief executive of Telekom Malaysia, said at the signing ceremony.

Internet users will get faster and more reliable service once the high-bandwidth cable starts operating in December 2008, he said.

Telekom Malaysia, which is leading the consortium of companies, said construction of the 12,428-mile link would begin immediately. It said it would be the first submarine cable system linking Southeast Asia directly to the United States.

The fiber optic cable, dubbed the Asia-America Gateway, will connect the U.S. West Coast with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, as well as offer "seamless interconnection" for those locations with Europe, Africa and Australia, Telekom said in a statement.

It will "provide an alternative and a more secure link for traffic from the region to the U.S.A.," Telekom said. "This low-risk route was designed to avoid the volatile and hazardous Pacific Ring, thus mitigating the effects from natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis."

A magnitude 7.1 quake snapped undersea cables near Taiwan on Dec. 26, disrupting phone and Internet communications across Asia as companies scrambled to reroute traffic through satellites and undamaged cables. Services were gradually restored in the days after the quake.

Malaysian Communications Minister Lim Keng Yaik said the cable will strengthen communications and business ties between Asia and the United States by ramping up international broadband capacity at competitive costs.

"This impressive joint effort will go a long way in increasing broadband uptake in this region, which will in turn increase the overall appeal for global investments and increase the competitiveness of the countries," Lim said.

Parties involved in the project include AT&T Inc. from the United States, the British Telecom Global Network Services, Eastern Communications Philippines Inc., India's Bharti AirTel, Thailand's CAT Telekom, Indonesia's Indosat and PT Telkom, Telecom New Zealand International, Singapore's StarHub and Australia's Telstra.

Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent and Japan's NEC Corp. have been awarded the contract for the construction of the link, officials said.

AniThyng wrote:I'll believe it when I see it

RThurmont wrote:Nice. One interesting thing you can do is to go to the websites of major operators like Global Crossing, which provide route maps of their global systems. MCI used to have a great map, but I don't know if its still online after the Verizon merger.

Xisiqomelir wrote:I'm amazed that any telco would actually spend on their infrastructure, though. That's certainly not playing to expectations. Good news if it's true.

phongn wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:I'm amazed that any telco would actually spend on their infrastructure, though. That's certainly not playing to expectations. Good news if it's true.

The largest two US telcos are spending a fortune on their infrastructure.

Xisiqomelir wrote:

phongn wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:I'm amazed that any telco would actually spend on their infrastructure, though. That's certainly not playing to expectations. Good news if it's true.

The largest two US telcos are spending a fortune on their infrastructure.

Useless to me until I see Japanese/Korean VDSL speeds and prices.

Ace Pace wrote:

Xisiqomelir wrote:

phongn wrote: The largest two US telcos are spending a fortune on their infrastructure.

Useless to me until I see Japanese/Korean VDSL speeds and prices.

You want a magic jump from ADSL and Cable speeds to Japanese speeds?

Admiral Valdemar wrote:But it'll be underwater, so you won't see it.

Here you go

RThurmont wrote:Oh awesome. Now if someone can just find me a network map of AT&T...

phongn wrote:

RThurmont wrote:Nice. One interesting thing you can do is to go to the websites of major operators like Global Crossing, which provide route maps of their global systems. MCI used to have a great map, but I don't know if its still online after the Verizon merger.

Here you go

Uraniun235 wrote:1) The fattest link on the IP network seems to be the Seattle-Portland link... which seems odd. Not even NYC has a bigger link to anywhere...

phongn wrote:

Uraniun235 wrote:1) The fattest link on the IP network seems to be the Seattle-Portland link... which seems odd. Not even NYC has a bigger link to anywhere...

There are more links than just VZB's.

Phantasee wrote:How deep do they lay these things? I mean, I doubt they hit the ocean floor, but how do they stay at a certain depth without falling down?

Sea Skimmer wrote:

Phantasee wrote:How deep do they lay these things? I mean, I doubt they hit the ocean floor, but how do they stay at a certain depth without falling down?

They certainly do hit the ocean floor, though when encountering undersea mountain ranges or trenches the contact with the bottom may not be continuous. Thanks to modern sonar and mapping of the ocean floor, the cable laying ship can specifically pay out extra cable when encountering obstacles to ensure that the cable is under as little stress as possible.

There is no practical way to suspend a cable above the bottom of the ocean for any distance, the curvature of the earth plus the limits of tension on the cable simply will not allow it. Even if you COULD do that, you certainly wouldn’t want too. Some deep sea fishing trawler would snare its net on your half billion dollar cable very quickly, assuming a whale didn’t blunder into it.

Phantasee wrote:And how do we know we aren't screwing something up?

Uraniun235 wrote:

Phantasee wrote:And how do we know we aren't screwing something up?

The total surface area covered by underwater cable is a tiny, tiny fraction of the total surface area of the ocean floor.