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From the Arctic's Melting Ice, an Unexpected Digital Hub (nytimes.com)
Cecilia Kang, reporting for the New York Times: This is one of the most remote towns in the United States, a small gravel spit on the northwest coast of Alaska, more than 3,700 miles from New York City. Icy seas surround it on three sides, leaving only an unpaved path to the mainland. Getting here from Anchorage, about 700 miles away, requires two flights. Roads do not connect the two places. Basics like milk and bread are delivered by air, and gas is brought in by barge during the summer. Needless to say, this is not the sort of place you expect to be a hub of the high-tech digital world. But in a surprising, and bittersweet, side effect of global warming -- and of the global economy -- one of the fastest internet connections in America is arriving in Point Hope, giving the 700 or so residents their first taste of broadband speed. The new connection is part of an ambitious effort by Quintillion, a five-year old company based in Anchorage, to take advantage of the melting sea ice to build a faster digital link between London and Tokyo. High-speed internet cables snake under the world's oceans, tying continents together and allowing email and other bits of digital data sent from Japan to arrive quickly in Britain. Until recently, those lines mostly bypassed the Arctic, where the ice blocked access to the ships that lay the cable. But as the ice has receded, new passageways have emerged, creating a more direct path for the cable -- over the earth's northern end through places like the Chukchi Sea -- and helping those emails move even move quickly. Quintillion is one of the companies laying the new cable, and Point Hope is one of the places along its route.
The difference this year compared to the past century of ship travel through the NorthEast and NorthWest passage(s) is that this was the first year ships could travel through without needing ice breaker ships to lead them. The reduced cost is resulting in an increase of commercial traffic which I'm sure won't have any negative impact on global warming. ;)
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Great, they will discover Prime and bankrupt Amazon.
Forget the emails, we all know what this is about: faster streaming of tentacle porn in UHD! Fuck ya!
#DeleteFacebook
Nobody cares if emails take another couple of milliseconds.
Reducing latency for transactions on financial markets is another story.
sigo ergo sum
to build a faster digital link between London and Tokyo
So this is for high frequency trading. The plebs will get whatever scraps fall from the mouths of the quants.
Less than 700 people in the place. 12:10 male:female ratio. It's small, and there's nowhere else anywhere nearby. It's dark, and cold, and more or less in the middle of a cold ocean. There isn't enough food (at least if you want a modern diet - not sure about living off fish). Median income is ~US60K, but you know the cost of living is going to be nasty.
Why does Point Hope still exist? You'd think there'd be a small military outpost if anything.
'Cept for the electricity part.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What freedom are you losing?
But you're right, it would be devastating to destroy the economy when we will have to buy a new planet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
TFA was written in The New York Times. It's very unlikely that the average New Yorker knows where Anchorage, San Francisco and LA are. They might know Seattle only because of Amazon and/or Starbucks.
Could be a good location for wind power.
The more direct paths will likely lead to each ship burning less diesel per trip. More trips due to the ease is just an unfortunate side effect.
I remember back in the 80's, I had dial up would send emails to a friend in DC (other side of the continent) who also had dial up and get a response back in seconds. I can only imagine what a faster system would be like. Maybe get responses before I send anything.
oblig:
New Yorker Magazine, The View From 9th Ave
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Looks like about Class 4 but there's outstanding potential just North of there at Wevok. Point Hope has an elevation of 7 feet, whereas ~50 feet in Wevok, so it might be a better place for development driven by melting sea ice.
I understand that Point Hope will relay all incoming traffic to every outbound link. This will produce extra congestion, but makes Point Hope simpler and cheaper to maintain.
I'll be jealous when it's a switch or router.
so, what happens when the sea level rises? or a tsunami? Are they building it on stilts?
Whys everyone hate you, bud? I musta missed the big break...