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."

Comments

Financing?

[rootus-rootus]

Ok, where is the Dentist?

Facebook investors

[hey]

I bet Facebook IPO investors didn't know they were investing in this.

Re:Facebook investors

[phantomfive]

I guarantee Facebook isn't doing it as a charity operation.

They expect to get a return on their investment. Facebook might be ripping off their stock holders in general, (ha! might! I crack myself up), but you can count on them to never betray their stockholders by donating to charity!

Re:Facebook investors

[garcia]

So? Investing in a company is a gamble no matter what knowns there are. Companies always do things which are unexpected and possibly undesirable. However, sometimes these unexpected and undesirable actions have large payoffs.

Perhaps Facebook wants a better presence in Asia. If some of the Asian countries which will be best served by this updated cable now have better access to Facebook, the payoffs could be huge for the investors. If not, an investor can always take their money elsewhere.

Re:Facebook investors

[Mashiki]

So? Investing in a company is a gamble no matter what knowns there are.

Pretty much, the only thing I expect on a stock return though is a good return per-share. And if I hold enough stock, I expect an invitation to the shareholders meeting so if they're doing anything stupid, I can voice my complaints. If it pays off, I really don't care what they do, as long as they're making me money.

People can whine and cry about "greedy wall street" and all the rest. But they happily forget that the vast majority of the investments are retirement funds, and other loose asset shares including healthcare offsets. Or general people like me who are out to make money. Though as a point, I didn't buy any FB shares, at their offer range it was way too high. Their initial offer should have been $23, it would have climbed to $27 and settled out then picked up some in awhile. Then tanked.

Re:Facebook investors

[isorox]

I bet Facebook IPO investors didn't know they were investing in this.

Yes, their money's being spent on something tangible, which has a good chance of ROI!

Paging Neal Stephenson?

[Gothmolly]

Didn't I read a book about this?

Look on the bright side.

[jd]

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.

Re:Look on the bright side.

[datavirtue]

maybe we can get all the Facebook users to migrate entirely over to Internet 3 and leave everyone else alone.

You gave me goosebumps.

Re:Look on the bright side.

[LordLucless]

Sorry, how exactly to Facebook users impact your usage of the rest if the internet such that moving them off to different infrastructure would benefit you?

As far as I can see, you're getting nothing but benefit from Facebook existing; namely, it gives you a group of people to whinge about and feel smugly superior to. Bitching about AOL users just isn't enough to satisfy your ego any more.

Why facebook?

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Investing in wireless

[msauve]

Without wires, obviously. How hard can it be to not install wires?

unh-un

[PopeRatzo]

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.

Re:unh-un

[PopeRatzo]

...and git off mah lawn?

No, you are welcome on my lawn as long as your owner picks up after you.

Re:unh-un

[Crypto Gnome]

I also don't want Google to own the Clouds and Apple to own the Moon.

Why not? Oracle already owns (the) Sun!

Facebook's Strategy

[andersh]

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/

Networks Of Necessity

[andersh]

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).

Re:Networks Of Necessity

[PopeRatzo]

It's a sound strategic move for any large content and service provider including Google, Apple and especially Facebook.

I'm sure it is. I'm also sure there are a lot of "moves" that would be sound strategy for a corporation that would not be beneficial to the rest of the world.

I haven't yet made the leap of faith to, "What's good for Facebook is good for the World".

Re:Investing in wireless

[ceoyoyo]

Don't forget, it's curved open water. As in, you can't see one point from the other.

Re:Investing in wireless

[khallow]

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.

Re:Mutual Interests and Finding A Balance

[PopeRatzo]

The part that bothers me is private industry owning structures that physically cross borders, international waters, etc. I know it's already been done but regulation becomes fuzzy with these trans-national projects. Does the country at one end regulate or the other or both or none?

I also don't want corporations having their own foreign policy or their own military. Both already exist, but I'm not happy about it.