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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."
I dunno about that ... I had @Home for two years before AT&T took it over, and I had 4 Mbit/sec symmetric access (damned fast, my friend) for $39.95/month. Granted AT&T cut me off at the balls to 1.5 Mbit/sec down / 256 Kbit/sec up, so maybe your point isn't so far off the mark. Oh well. At least AT&T isn't a media company like Time Warner.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Despite the fact that this has been covered in the "major media outlets" ad nauseum for the past five years, did you venture to type this in your browser?
o bal+crossing&btnG=Search+News
1 .000/hba78601_0.HTM
http://www.globalcrossing.com/
Or, maybe:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=gl
For the truly adventurous, there is the text from the house oversight and investigation committee, regarding the effects of the GC bankruptcy:
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba7860
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.
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.
Optus is owned by sing-tel (singapore telecom) so it looks like singapore may be the new bandwidth king soon
Global Crossing's biggest claim to fame is its undersea cables. It was one of a very small number of companies -- two or three -- to own ships capable of laying undersea cable. Global Crossing's original mission was to build a network of modern, high-speed undersea cables linking the major continents. Not only would this be useful as part of their own network, but they could resell capacity to other companies that didn't have a fleet of their own.
The missing part of that plan was a connection across the continental U.S., so they set out to acquire a landline fiber network. They purchased Frontier Corporation for their nationwide fiber. Frontier was formerly Rochester Telephone of Rochester, NY, one of the largest local telephone companies that was never part of the Bell System.
I can remember the days when transferring a file from overseas was done only as a last resort, because the Internet links across the oceans were low-bandwidth copper or satellite links. Global Crossing's undersea fiber, and the competition it spurred, brought that era to an end.
Technically, Global Crossing is a Bermuda corporation; that's a tax dodge used by a number of companies because of Bermuda's very liberal attitude towards incorporation and taxes. (The prerequisite "corporate presence" in the company can consist of a mailbox, for example. It's not a major hardship for a Board of Directors to hold at least one meeting annually in Bermuda, either.)
The reason that Global Crossing's sale to a Singapore concern is of national interest is Global Crossing's contracts with the U.S. Government. Because of its undersea fiber, Global Crossing is one of a few companies that can provide the government with a worldwide communications network that isn't sub-leased. The Department of Defense has several contracts with Global Crossing. They were concerned about their calls and data being sent over a network owned by ST Telemedia, which is itself owned by the Singapore government.
More worrisome was the original plan, in which ST Telemedia would share ownership with Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd., a company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, believed to be closely tied to the Chinese government. ST Telemedia bought out Hutchinson's share in the reorganization plan, probably helping clear the way for the approval. It's hard to imagine the U.S. government permitting Department of Defense communications networks to be partly owned by the Chinese.