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Global Crossing (Nearly) Sold To Singapore
sQuEeDeN writes "According to money.cnn.com, the sale of Global Crossing to STT (Singapore Technologies Telemedia) has been permitted by the administration. There originally were concerns about this sale by the DoD/ DOHS but, by what I assume to be much behind-the-scenes negotiating, such concerns have been alleviated. Ultimately this shouldn't [knock] matter much but it's always interesting to see where your bandwidth comes from. We'll see what it means for the U.S. to have it's global bandwidth be owned by, well, someone else."
Much like Microsoft gulping up smaller companies, this kind of thing pisses me off.
Anyone else upset by this? I value freedom, open source/documentation, and honesty.
Is that what we're seeing here? I doubt it.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Global Crossing is a notorious spam-haven. Perhaps, if it goes to Singapore, that will change for the better with spammers being sentenced to canings.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
We'll see what it means for the U.S. to have it's global bandwidth be owned by, well, someone else.
You obviously haven't been paying attention... a *lot* of spam comes from IPs that resolve to .sg domains.
[mr rogers]
I knew ya could!
[/mr rogers]
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I am sick of corporate culture, the suit and tie, the ass licking, the hierachies, the insincerity. It is spiritually dead, a leech on the planet. Let's kill it.
Global Crossing now provides free open relays for spammers... (OK, not really, but I'm gonna have nightmares about it tonight)
What is your Slash Rating?
that Bush doesn't do anything to piss Singapore off in the near future.
In other news (OT), does anyone know what the hell STFU means on a dishwasher LCD readout? I opened my dishwasher just then and it didn't stop running, therefore entirely covering me in water and bits of food. I closed it quickly and now it's blinking STFU on the LCD readout.
I bet carnivore or whatever the hall it's called these days reared it's ugly head somewhere in this deal.
Can't wiretap you country because it's unconstitutional or ISPs won't play? Let an overseas developer buy it in exchange for snooping access.
Just a theory, nothing provable yet, but the deal sounds shady.
Hammer of Truth
What is it and why should I care? The article doesnt explain it very well
So I don't care so long as I keep my job for now ;)
Just another entry in the logbook of the continuing saga of America selling itself off piecemeal to the highest bidder. By the way, I have an extra video monitor for sale if anyone wants it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Is there a "Letter of Understanding" between the DoJ / DHS and Global Crossing? Can the DHS demand connection details from a specific (muslim/strange/terrorist) IP adress?
I am sure there is such thing. The "Deutsche Telekom" singed such a deal with the FBI because the FBI did not want to loose the ability to wiretap "bad guys" that used VoiceStream.
NoSuchGuy
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
You have to remember that even though Global Crossing seems ubiquitous, the company is only four years old (formed in 1999 from a merger between a Bermuda-based fiber-optic company and a local US telecom operator), and really died at the age of two--it was run into the ground by the end of 2001, buried in accounting scandals, and filed for bankruptcy in January of 2002. All it has going for it is a widespread physical infrastructure (most of which it doesn't even own outright, with liabilities in the tens of billions of dollars). I say good riddance; let Singapore have them. The only unfortunate thing is that GC's public shareholders will get nothing--that's a big fat $0--from this deal.
It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
Only the future of low cost broadband will be realized through municipal run companies like the electric company. We are lagging behind the rest of the world. Doubters ,ask yourself this, how much would electricity cost if the electric companies were privatized ?
The folks California could help you out there. The big businesses who are always one step ahead of regulators were price fixing and gouging.
Broadband internet access is too important now to let companies like AT&T and Time Warner to control.
If the public and local governments would take control of the cable lines and implement WI - Fi Network over them then we would see some real fireworks. Leasing these lines to big business who put stupid shows and infomercials for the dumbest percentage of the population is not smart.
Inter alia, note the use of the words "ONLY IF",
i rs/exon-florio/
" President can exercise this authority under section 721 (also known as the "Exon-Florio provision") to block a foreign acquisition of a U.S. corporation only if he finds:
(1) there is credible evidence that the foreign entity exercising control might take action that threatens national security, and
(2) the provisions of law, other than the International Emergency Economic Powers Act do not provide adequate and appropriate authority to protect the national security. "
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/international-affa
"TREASON" has a very specific definition in the Constitution:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Clearly, despite all his faults, and they are legion, the glorious leader has done nothing wrong in this case.
Here are the ammended contract terms finally approved by DoD/DOHS:
Cable Maintenence: Purchaser acknowledges that the communications system comprises many thousands of miles of optical fiber, and that this fiber will require periodic maintenence.
ADDENDUM: Purchaser's employees may from time to time encounter a splice in said optical fiber. These splices may occasionally connect to black boxes and/or satellite dishes, or other equipment or devices. Purchaser acknowledges that such equipment or devices are NOT included in this transaction and are NOT the property of the purchaser. Purchaser agrees that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE THE PURCHASERS EMPLOYEES TO DISTURB, DISABLE, INTERFERE WITH OR DISCLOSE THESE DEVICES TO ANY PARTY. Purchaser's employees will at all times ignore these devices and deny their existence to any party that may inquire about such devices. If purchaser violates the terms of this clause, purchaser acknowledges that the entire communications network may be vaporized by a controlling third party without notice and without any compensation to the purchaser, and the security deposit will not be refunded.
i already got 146.82.0.0/16 plonked at the firewall due to spam attacks from Global Crossing idiots. I wonder how much more i'll wack in the near future.
Oh well, they can join the rest of the asian spammers i've plonked at 202/8, 203/8, 210/7, 218/7, and 220/7. (Yes, i really do despise countries that
dont care about their spam problems)
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Bermuda Based just means that it's an American company that doesn't pay any taxes that's all.
How is this news? Certainly it is significant that a foreign company almost bought a major telecommunications company based in the US, because it's never happened before, but do other countries complain that we own so much of what is critical to the survival of their countries. We supply weapons, telecommunications equipment, food, and more. The only things other countries are not dependent on us for are oil and coffee. Are we the moral elite that it's okay we can leverage grain for political reasons, but when another country tries to bargain, it's all of a sudden... "oh, no, the horror?" Global Crossings by its very name attempts to project a non-national image--Global Crossings can be the dominant carrier in Trinidad without a problem, but Singapore (those dirty disciplined Asians) owning a chunk of the US market? No way.
are you from St. Louis? It's called "sports". Check it out sometime.
it was bad enough when people lost jobs because they were outsourced now we're going to lose ever more job because of foriegn takeovers...if this isn't stopped i think its about time we start considering the option to outsource our congress...
You are only one.
Moderators are many.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
{/sarcasm}
Outsourcing Congress is a GREAT IDEA! :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Good Luck, its harder to find more F...Uped people than them of the Singapore
The small error is that they also think that they are gods gift to humanity and can do every thing better? that will surly not be a issue for a general US person, yes I'm not having a good day....
I just hate bit SPAM, (www.netnoise.com.kh)
I support punk bands, but I don't get the Israeli angle. Is it a Jewish thing? Do you guys run out on stage wearing yarmulkes on your heads with curly sideburns and scream about passover and dradles? Or is it truly Israeli, where you run out on stage with a bulldozer and m-16s and scream about Palestinian bombers.
Please clarify.
It's not just a good idea, it's the law!
That said, A couple of points.
Municipal broadband isn't actually that bad of an idea. If you think phones make sense, bandwidth to houses might, too (I'm thinking of Universal Access here.)
The parent clearly has no idea what actually happened in California wrt power. Nice, pat answers like those offered are exactly what CA doesn't need. (I was a resident for almost 10 years, and left. I'm familiar with CA's dumbshit behaviour.)
I do agree that WiFi should set us free.
What, exactly, that has to do with AT&T, Time/Warner, etc. is beyond me. And all the other stuff, yeah, right on. Dude.
Make sense. It helps the case you're attempting to make.
I forget what 8 was for.
I guess that means no more chewing gum while online.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Had an acquaintance named John who sat on the board of Global Crossing, at least in 1997 - 98 he did... he spent most of the year in Singapore as it was... wonder where he is now?
He kept telling me all I needed was 20k and a ticket to Singapore and I could live like a king... still thinking about it.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"We'll see what it means for the U.S. to have it's global bandwidth be owned by, well, someone else."
Southern Cross is the biggest pipe in the South Pacific. It's not exactly US owned.
Telecom Corp. of New Zealand Ltd. 50.0%
Optus 40.0%
WorldCom, Inc. 10.0%
I doubt it would ever happen but I'm sure more than a few network security analysts in the govt have many misgivings about a forein company controlling the largest telecom carrier in the US.
I'm sure many would point out that we've had no problems with the Panama Canal yet. But what happens if China saw it in it's interest to block passage of US ships. What would the US do? Go back and take it over again?
Now that can be easy enough. But what do you do when the company controlling the network your work across just changes the passwords across the whole network and then shuts down nearly the entire US network grid? What army of engineers will go out and replace each and every network device that's blocked?
It's obvious that nobody asked Bush the hard questions or maybe since he does not even use a cell phone, knows how vital these systems really are.
The holdup in the fed was over a foreign business interest owning and operating a piece of "critical infrastructure" like a fibre optic grid. Big deal. There are two relevant counter-points to such an argument:
First, there are several other large backbone companies that are still very much U.S.-owned: Qwest, Level3, UUNet/WorldCom/MCI, C&W, etc. In fact, a handy breakdown of major backbone providers is available at http://navigators.com/isp.html. Global Crossing is a small piece in a big pie.
Second, regardless of who "owns" the network, what finally matters is who has access to the physical equipment. If, in some bizarre act of twisted politics the government of Singapore decides to use STT to hijack the American telecom system, all the U.S. government has to do is break down the doors of the buildings housing all the routers. It's impossible for a foreign company to provide "remote" cable connectivity because of the physical element - all they're really doing is paying people to run the network and taking in the profits.
Regardless, however, it's reasonably certain that whatever "deal" was brokered between the U.S. government and STT probably involves an open-ended permit for monitoring traffic on the wire. Yet another gift brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security...
Get a load of SGs mind set by reading some of these posts. SG local Yahoo Boards
/. was bad? ROTFLMAO
You thought
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
You are new here aren't you. :)
Perle don't get paid for nothing...
What, like the United States*?
Make sure you've got your own back covered before you start hurling your bigotry around. (Of course, I don't know if you are from the U.S., but if you're going to ignorantly lump all Asian countries into one big stereotype, I'll take my liberties and at least conclude that you are from the so-called western world, and that you are, as such, just as responsible for the U.S. administration as the people of Singapore are for that of China.)
That having been said, I know a lot of UCE originates from China, but with a population that's about one fifth of theirs and a GDP per capita more than eight freaking times of theirs, which country do you think is employing its resources least adequately?
*) Spamcop seems to have made a PC decision to stop compiling statistics by worst offending ISPs, but while they did, the two main culprits (and it doesn't look like that has changed) were consistently two *cough* Sprint large *cough* Bell South networks in the U.S.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
And you got modded offtopic, bitch.
I probably would get modded "troll". TRY @
This isn't the first sale of telecommunications infrastructure to an SG company owned by the SG gov't. Optus, the second largest telecom company in Australia was sold to Singtel which the Singaporean government has a 70% stake in, meaning it basically owns it, and I think the CEO is the PM of Singapore's relative. They kept it quiet in the Australian media that Singtel is government owned, and I've spoken to an executive at Optus who's told me that their company is being run into the ground internally. So, the Singaporean government is involved in a conspiracy to take over the world's telecommunications? You be the judge!
This occured already over three years ago with Verio being bought out by NTT, which is the major Japanese telecom. Clinton had to sign off of the deal, and Verio has a bigger backbone than Global Crossing. Anyone that is petrified about some offshore company handling US traffic is about three years too late in worrying.
Eat recycled food - it's good for the environment, and OK for you.
For your enjoument, your "offtopic" got m2'ed unfair :)
It's great to see the American way come to bite you in the ass. Capatalism at it's finest.
Americans couldn't manage the company...run it into the ground. Bitch and moan about it. A foreign company comes along, buys it for a bargain price and you complain about it!
hahahaha!
You know they'll get it done right this go around! Hooray for STT!
heh, i wasnt saying asian countries were inferor (i love how if you block a certain country, your considered a racist), i was implying they have major spam problems. As the mail admin for about 20 or so domains, i see where the spam comes from. Yes, the US generates the most spam over all (and believe me, i block the spamming motherfuckers at sprint and bell south like you wouldnt believe, my firewall that pertains to spammers runs at 852 lines and growing). But on a per ip basis, the asian ip ranges tend to be the worst (though south america is making a run at #1).
The asian isps also (with notable exception of outblaze) tend to not respond to larts or spamcop notifications. Go to NANAE sometime and ask the regulars there how many of them block all of china, taiwan, hongkon, singapore, etc.
And finally, i checked the spam cop in progress link at about 1:05am pst time, and roughly 1/4 of all the references there at that time were from asian ip ranges.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I, for one, welcome your new Singaporean bandwidth overlords. And I don't even live in the United States...
*g,d&r*
np: Bogdan Raczynski - Ahou Bouken (Samurai Math Beats)
"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
Don't forget, Verio is a Tier-1 provider that was bought by NTT a couple of years ago. No, they don't actually own any fiber, but most of these questions and concerns were exactly the same, especially considering how large Verio's hosting business was at the time.
Get off my launchpad!
That having been said, I know a lot of UCE originates from China, but with a population that's about one fifth of theirs and a GDP per capita more than eight freaking times of theirs, which country do you think is employing its resources least adequately?
Remember when Japan's NTT bought up Verio? Guess what Verio does now to stem the flow of spam... listwashing.
I don't see Singapore improving much of anything. In fact I see it getting worse, a la "pink contracts".
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Retard. They're in the same geographic region, but are totally different societies & economic systems.
"Mexico, US, Panama, etc, they're all the same"
See what I mean?
'tard.
Unfortunately, some countries are forced to sell their assets to foreign investors, whether they like it nor not.
This process is popularly known as "liberation".
Legally right or wrong, US presidents (usually republican) have the strong appearance of having been secret agents for asian interests since at least Richard Nixon. Other such foreign agents acting for asian interests have been Ronald Regan, George HW Bush, and now his somewhat demented boy.
We're just bringing the wonders of off-shore outsourcing to the entire world because it has done so much to rebuild our own economy.
Fair enough, though, since the British gang-raped Persia in 1908, creating BP (then Anglo-Persian), then quickly invaded Iraq in 1917. World War One ends, Britain takes over Palestine. 1948, Britain gives up Palestine, the new U.N. proceeds to bugger everything up in creating Israel. The U.S. installs the Shah in Iran in 1953, arms shipments follow. Egypt nationalizes the Suez in 1956, much to the annoyance of Britain and France. Israel invades Egypt in 1967, Jordan attacks Israel, Israel attacks Syria, the world scratches its collective head. Iraq nationalizes all of BP's assets in 1972. The next year Iran gives Britain a big raspberry and takes everything too. The same year, Israel shoots down a Libyan passenger airliner because it approached a military reactor, provided largely by the United States' "atoms for peace program," subsequently filled with plutonium enriched from uranium stolen from Britain and through cooperation with West Germany and constructed into usable weapons thanks to cooperation from South Africa and France. The Yom Kippur war begins in 1973 as Egypt and Syria attack Israel. Airlifts and Embargoes against the United States and Britain ensue. Saddam Hussein comes to power in 1979 thanks to the CIA. The Soviets simultaneously and inexplicably commit slow suicide in Afghanistan for no apparent reason other than pride. Meanwhile, the Shah of Iran previously installed by the U.S. falls, arms shipments to Iraq follow as does the Iran-Iraq war. Millions are killed with American weapons.
Britain, having thus lost its entire middle-eastern oil empire, several hundred tons of uranium, not to mention paying a crapload for the oil it used to own, proceeds to swallow Arco and Amoco in the U.S. If they can't have the supplies, they're damn well going to have the distribution and besides, the rest of the world is having all the fun screwing up the middle east and they're just too tired to bother having done it before themselves already.
Meanwhile, Kuwait steals oil from Iraq, Iraq invades Kuwait, the U.S. invades Iraq, causing Iraq to fire back with the weapons shipped from the U.S. not ten years earlier. The Saudis then attack the United States, so the U.S. attacks Afghanistan already a pile of rubble thanks to the Soviets. Certain that Iraq still has the weapons shipped directly from U.S. manufacturers, talk of shooting fish, the U.S. invades Iraq again, oddly enough the Saudis decline to participate and the U.S. does not find anything listed on its invoices.
This leaves the U.S. in an admittedly uncomfortable social situation involving a few million really pissed off Iraqis and the entire world looking rather puzzled. The British, however, are left gaffing Americans in California two-bucks-fifty for gasoline pumped out 90% of the time from their own damned back yards all the while blaming the middle east for high oil prices and scoffing and our bad manners in world affairs.
You know, despite the whole chaos death and destruction part, there's a pretty hearty and healthy laugh to be had by all. But in the end, the Brits are really not the ones who should be crying foul.
Naturally, that's what STFU means in this context
The very attempt to buy a communications network in a foreign country is a threat to that country's national security.
By the way, I have an extra video monitor for sale if anyone wants it.
It's of course not made in the U.S.A. I presume...
i already got 146.82.0.0/16 plonked at the firewall due to spam attacks from Global Crossing idiots. I wonder how much more i'll wack in the near future.
Oh well, they can join the rest of the asian spammers i've plonked at 202/8, 203/8, 210/7, 218/7, and 220/7. (Yes, i really do despise countries that
dont care about their spam problems)
You my dear Sir, are an Idiot if you think all of Asia is just one country. I am from Singapore and I can assure you it is not as bad as China (althought it's bad enough).
Global Crossing is a bandwidth provider, i.e. they sell raw optical SONET/SDH traffic to ISPs. They don't control anything that rides their network. This spam shit you're talking about is nonsense. It's like saying that AT&T is responsible for telemarketers.
There are 1.2 billion people in China.
Per capita they have a hell of a lot less spammers than you yanks.
Oh great! Whinging Americans complaining that somebody outside their country might own some of their infrastructure.
Get used to it guys! We elsewhere in the world have got used to you buggers owning all of our stuff for quite a while. And we've just been watching (and sadly since I'm a Brit) helping you wage ware just so you can own some more of the world.
corporations convicted of fraud should lose their charter
Being dead may kill a software company, but it doesn't kill a fiber infrastructure. That part is getting sold off for about 1 cent on the dollar, to people who are getting spending $250M to get a network that was worth $25B during its 15 minutes of fame. That means that the new owners can go sell this effectively-infinite bandwidth for much cheaper than the original owners could, and those original owners were already kicking the chair out from under everybody else in the business. If you're a consumer of international bandwidth, this isn't exactly good news, but it's certainly lots of fun.
Also unfortunately, though, GBLX realized during the boom that to make any money on all this fiber, they were going to have to create lots of demand, and they were trying to do this by buying a data-center colo/hosting business (Frontier) that also owned lots of US fiber. Lots of other US fiber providers had also caught on to this, and there was a huge overbuild in that market as well. This helped GBLX die more spectacularly than they would have otherwise, if perhaps a bit later, but it meant that parts of them were now American owned rather than Bermudan, and many of their bankruptcy creditors were American, so this gave Bush a handle on them to block the sale to people who weren't his cronies and sell them to Lee Kwan Yew's cronies instead. Bad, bad, bad.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The *important* part of Global Crossing wasn't the Frontier fiber network and hosting centers - it was the huge underseas fiber network they built using modern technology, which had close-to-infinite bandwidth because of multiplexing. They and some of the other consortium-structured fiber companies were tying the globe together, which was a Great Thing, except they weren't financially sustainable, and the price of bandwidth has been in free-fall for a couple of years, just as cross-US bandwidth prices have been. So GBLX died, and refused an offer to sell itself to Hutchinson for $750M, and later had to settle for selling itself to Hutchison Whompoa for $250M, about 1% of their original value. Of course this means that Hutchison can cut prices even faster than GBLX could, because it didn't have their debt to meet (that's a big difference between a fiber infrastructure company, which sells its assets if it dies and a software company, which usually just vanishes.) And that was fine.
The EVIL part of all of this is that the US government intervened politicallly, because they weren't going to get what they wanted from the Hong Kongers. They've got better political connections with Singapore, in spite of their favored customer being government-owned, and you have to expect that there'll be some eavesdropping that happens, and some refusal to sell to politically incorrect customers.
Disclaimer: I'm not totally disinterested here: I work for a telecom company that does have more competition from Singtel than from Hutchison, but this is my opinion and not theirs. Singtel's at least a technically competent company, as opposed to the Bush Administration, who aren't competent about manipulating markets that should be free so they can help out their cronies.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The problems weren't the Chinese interfering with shipping - they were Bush Sr's buddy Manuel Noriega getting too greedy and interfering with the cocaine trade. And all my politically liberal friends with their "Bush and Noriega in 1988 - A Crack Team!" bumperstickers helped increase the political embarassment he was causing, which led to a war that killed about 6000 Panamanians and helped rehabilitate the US military's political power.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Would a deal like this fly in Canada? I seem to remember many public corporations here have to be owned by a significant percentage of Canadian shareholders and some fat deals failed to happen because of that. Also, if it's a media outlet, they are made to provide some Canadian content in order to favored by the government and Sheila Copps (sp?), Canadian Heritage minister. Also noticable, many popular US magazines have versions with a few Canada-related pages missing in US issues, perhaps Time magazine has this? I guess ST media just lays cables and does not control content coming through so content control would not be applicable here, I just thought I'd mention that along. What is surprising is how the US can sell such important pieces of its infrastracture, and even media outlets. Perhaps cash means more down the border than ownership and content. Anyone remember some Japanese company buying lots of Holliwood movie makers about ten years ago? Are Americans worried about basically outsorcing their infrastracture management? Sincere concern, not a troll. -vladpetersen
Deregulation, US style (i.e. helping croonies and oozing over future campaign donations) does not work as your example shows, but do not blame capitalism for that.
In the UK electricity, phone, gas and other utilities were deregulated but in a way that promotes competition and prices have been falling in absolute (and thus real terms) for several years now. i.e your bill is getting smaller. Same for broadband (which comes as a consequence of Telcos deregulation).
When the UK tried the deregulation US style (make rich a few buddies without promoting competition) on the train system, all collapsed spectacularly bad and the goverment had to take control over the rail infrastructure.
Don't blame capitalism, it does work when you ensure the rules are clear and fai and legislate to promote competition.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
-Panama is not part of the US. It was occupied territory stolen from Colombia by means of creating a puppet country (Panamanians friends: sorry, but you know it is true) to ensure control of ship routes.
-What does China have to do with this? Are you on crack?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No I am not upset.
What does this have to do with freedom, open source/documentations and honesty?
Let us know please, it is always interesting to visit the deluded world of a paranoid mind.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and no one did. the Singapore company got a lot of fiber and a worldwide footprint on the cheap. the chief reason the former owners got into hot water was mismanagement and fraud. good riddance! (and this is from a small ex Global Crossing shareholder)