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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.
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
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.
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!
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.
"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...