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Cable-Laying Boom Will Boost Internet Capacity
Barence writes "Dozens of new undersea internet cables are set to be laid over the next couple of years, providing a huge boost to worldwide capacity. The huge boom in internet video has led to doomsday scenarios of the internet running out of capacity. Although experts believe that there is abundant amounts of 'dark fibre' lying unused in oceans across the world, major telcos are pushing ahead with projects that will see at least 25 new cables laid by 2010, at a cost of $6.4bn."
I don't care about more fiber in the oceans nearly as much as I care about fiber in the last mile to my house. So far living in North America doesn't have me watching BBC streaming videos yet.
Of course, this does mean that ship anchors are less likely to take down countries than before.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
With all the spying going on, the less traffic that has to go through the states, the better.
What?
Who here really things the Internet is going to hit some capacity ceiling? Get over it. It won't happen. Did not happen to USENET back in the day and won't happen now.
And when will the editors learn to read or at least use a spell checker?
So what they are talking about is lots of fiber optic line that is not being used for one reason or another
The majority of dark fiber is owned by the Tier 1 ISP's, specifically, Level3. The fiber was laid by small independants during the .com bubble, and as those companies folded, telecoms bought it up for pennies on the dollar.
They bought the fiber explicitly for the purpose of preventing competition from springing up, and, god forbid, offering broadband at a reasonable price. Now, they keep it dark so they can claim that their network capacity is near its limit and justify the incredibly draconian policy they have toward network growth.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.