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TIME DotCom and Facebook Invest In Massive Undersea Internet Cable Project
MojoKid writes "This week, TIME dotCom (out of Malaysia) has entered into a construction and maintenance agreement of the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) submarine cable system connecting Malaysia to Korea and Japan. The APG is a 10,000 km international fibre optic cable system that will link Malaysia to Korea and Japan with seven branches to other Asian countries. The cable system is scheduled to be ready in quarter three of 2014. TIME is leading up the process, but Facebook as well as a few others are joining in by combining $450 million to the cause."
Ok, where is the Dentist?
The moral of the story is: "Always remember to mount a scratch monkey."
I bet Facebook IPO investors didn't know they were investing in this.
Because fish need porn too.
Didn't I read a book about this?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Wireless doesn't help if the content originates 10000km away. Once it gets within a few 10's of km away from the consumer, sure go wireless.
Why?
Cables have greater bandwidth, lower latency and are able to reach greater distance for less power.
How exactly is wireless more useful in the long run?
I searched time.com for asia pacific gateway, and TIME Magazine has nothing to say about it. I wonder if there's a potential trademark case between TIME and TIME.
I love Mega Upload!
If they want to move all Facebook traffic off the regular Internet and build a separate infrastructure for it, maybe we can get all the Facebook users to migrate entirely over to Internet 3 and leave everyone else alone.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well in all the discussions about net neutrality one of the ideas was having the content providers owning the infrastructure. When you own it, no one can block/throttle or otherwise tamper with it. Cheaper too.
Would be more useful in the long run.
How do you propose to do this over 10,000 km of open water?
Why does Facebook even care about this? For a fraction of the cost of what they invested in this cable, they could open up a datacenter in Asia and replicate their content closer to their Asian customers.
I could see why someone like Google might want to boost capacity since they are a conduit to other sites, so making everyone faster helps them out, but I don't see what Facebook is gaining.
Without wires, obviously. How hard can it be to not install wires?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm just not comfortable with Facebook owning a trans-oceanic cable. There's just no good reason that they should own any infrastructure that crosses international borders and territorial waters.
I also don't want Google to own the Clouds and Apple to own the Moon.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The Europeans behind CERN and Tim Berners-Lee would like to have a word about their payment for using anything web related :)
This is all part of Facebook's new strategy.
Facebook will be building a huge new data center in northern Sweden to support the rapid global growth of its users. The new data center in Lulea, Sweden will be Facebook’s first facility outside the United States.
“It’s the next step in our ongoing strategy of building our own infrastructure and moving away from leased facilities,” said Facebook spokesman Michael Kirkland. “We are expecting this data center to continue to help us reduce latency for our users in Europe and beyond.”
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/10/27/facebook-goes-global-with-data-center-in-sweden/
TFA says "Facebook as well as a few others are joining in by combining $450 million to the cause". So unless you have another source, we really don't know how big a fraction of the cost was footed by Facebook. Facebook could, after all, be merely the pretty face, the celebrity endorser, among investors with a more significant stake in the project.
It's a sound strategic move for any large content and service provider including Google, Apple and especially Facebook.
They rely on the networks for their revenue, it makes sense to own parts of this infrastructure yourself if you can afford it. If only to use as leverage and/or offsetting future increases in transport costs. Owning huge datacenters is not enough, any longer, for the very large scale, global enterprises.
The [network] owners have already begun asking companies such as Facebook to pay for their users' data usage. The European ISPs and telecom corporations asked earlier this year for the right to offer "better" service levels to paying clients such as Facebook (i.e. Network Neutrality).
Don't forget, it's curved open water. As in, you can't see one point from the other.
Well, I think you could get even 801.11b to work, assume you had line of sight, say like satellites repeating the signal.
Bandwidth is the real problem. The article says the cable can handle almost 55 terabits per second with 40 gigabits per second per fiber (I guess there's over a thousand fibers in that cable). I'd love to see a wireless solution do that.
It's a way to turn the cash into something hard for the for the original shareholders that looks like it's related to their industry to stop the shares crashing and make the floatation look anything other than a float-and-run.
Yes, I see your point and it's well founded, however for the moment I see no reason to wish for interference.
The best way to resolve the issue is in the form of competition. The two sides, content providers and network owners, are struggling to finding a balance between who pays and owns what.
Regulators and consumers need only sit back and watch, if there is a need for regulation the watchdogs can step in and force their hand(s). This latest wave of changes has barely begun, who knows where and how the lines between the two sides will end?
As it stands the content providers interests happen to match that of the consumers, both want the lowest possible price for [their] users' free and unrestricted access.
Must be a real shock to find they've invested in something real!
Malaysia? Korea? Japan!? Whew! Hopefully the #TPP Agreement will be in place by the time this MEGA Time Dotcom link comes on-line. Citizens might just think about downloading copyrighted material over this backbone! Well... if not, at least the Japanese will rot in jail for killing the Creative Industry!
Latency is a problem as well -- repeating off of satelites is quick but still worse than just some fiber. Gota keep the quake ping times low!
Yay 40gbits/sec... a lovely oppurtunity for TCP and its windowing algorithms to f**k up. There needs to be a high-bandwidth, low-latency protocol that's somewhat smarter than UDP out there right?
Latency would absolutely suck if you were to be bouncing off satellites. That wouldn't be a viable option for interactive traffic, no matter how much bandwidth you would be getting.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Even if it wasn't for making money on the cable by providing access to others and charging for it, they'd have a large argument why others shouldn't be charging them for access to their consumers. It's the same as having a patent arsenal if you're into software. You won't enforce your patents, if others won't enforce theirs. By owning part of the global infrastructure, you have a successful weapon against (other) Tier-1 TelCos charging you an arm and a leg.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The problem isn't the satellite itself, it is the distance that the signal has to travel. 72000 km to geosynchronous orbit and back = 0.24s additional delay for each direction, or 0.48s additional ping delay
Isn't it fun having a flamewar with yourself?
Looking at the map in TFA, I can not help wondering why there is not a connection to the Philippines as well. The cable is going to be laid down relatively close to the Philippines, and having a link to a nation with 90+ million people could be... er... profitable?
Americans wouldn't care about leaving their country anyway, they wouldn't even know the difference between Korea and Malaysia, they don't even know the difference between China and Japan.
They are so backward in the USA they banned the of teaching evolution in their schools and now teach their children that Adam and Eve are their great great grandparents and that the Loch Ness Monster is real but Dinosaurs never existed. Most of them make moonshine, have bad teeth and sleep with their cousins so I wouldn't expect too much from them.
Most of them are so stupid they gave their life savings to Mark Zuckerberg and hoped he do something useful with it. They also created Justin Bieber and many of them use Apple Macs. Like I said, backward.
Its hard to make an umbrella that small fit over such a large territory isn't it? Nearly everything you said pertains to just a few states in the south eastern region. Please if you will make fun of this awful country, do it properly!
Not that I would ever admit it, but we gave the USA Justin Bieber cause he was fricken getting on our nerves.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
From the map, it looks like they are skipping the Philippines. I wonder why. I thought the Philippine population was blowing up, and I think they are also heavy Facebook users.
Is "Time dot come" related to "Time Magazine" ?
Or are we looking at a copyright infringement ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
That "Time dot com" is one of the many "semi governmental corporations" of Malaysia designed specifically for two purposes only -
1. To fleece as much $$$ from the taxpayers of Malaysia
2. To promote their "superiority racial identity" - namely, the Malays
nice flamebait, I especially enjoyed the gratuitous and Apple dig
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
20,000 Cantennas
would never work, but had to be said :-)
Smoke signals can be seen from way off - earth curvature be damned!