New Submarine Cable Planned Between SE Asia and US

[Ace Pace]

The link. So maybe you guys will get real speeds?

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.

[RThurmont]

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.

[AniThyng]

I'll believe it when I see it

[Admiral Valdemar]

But it'll be underwater, so you won't see it.

[Dartzap]

I'll believe it when I see it

Fail. For it to have worked it would have to have been spelt the wet way.

This lesson has been brought to you by the European Commission for Efficient Punning.

[Xisiqomelir]

I was home for Christmas last year when APCN 2 went down. It was a goddamn annoyance.

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]

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

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]

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]

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.

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

[Xisiqomelir]

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?

At least in the major urban centres of the country.

[Uraniun235]

Are we talking about those ridiculous 100Mbit connections some people have? Isn't that mostly confined to those big apartment buildings where they can afford to run huge pipes in because the population density is so high?

[AniThyng]

But it'll be underwater, so you won't see it.

When I see the speed, damn you! :p

But yes, I have failed the punnery test.

Not that any of this will matter when peak oil hits...

[RThurmont]

Here you go

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

[phongn]

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

Your Google-fu is weak, old man

[Uraniun235]

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

Two things struck me from that map:

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...

2) Several links in the Africa region were measured in Kbps.

[Phantasee]

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?

[phongn]

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.

[Uraniun235]

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.

Still seems odd to me that Verizon's biggest link would be there. Ah well.

[Sarevok]

The first benifit of submarine cables might be low ping. In the VSAT days ping here was 700-1000 ms. Which made it virtually impossible to play online games. After the SEA-ME-WE 4 submarine cable was installed the lag dropped to below 200 ms. This cable could be good news for gamers in the participating countries.

[Sea Skimmer]

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.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm curious as to how safe the cable is from earthquakes when last year an earthquake cut the cables and resulted in a slow crawl in access rate.

[Phantasee]

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.

But at the same time I hear about how we don't really know what's on the floor of the oceans. How do we just lay cable down there without knowing what's down there? And how do we know we aren't screwing something up?

And what kind of resolution have they mapped the ocean floor at?

[Uraniun235]

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.

[Phantasee]

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.

That'll help me sleep at night. Thanks.