Cable-Laying Boom Will Boost Internet Capacity 176
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."
Will this help EU/US? (Score:3, Insightful)
The cables are predominantly set to be laid in areas such as Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East, which are currently underserved.
So, in the Caribbean and Africa? Is the demand for video and other such growing traffic in huge demand there?
It doesn't seem that it will really increase traffic throughput for the Eu and the US where this traffic has the most potential to grow.
Am I wrong?
Your grammar are terrible. (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess it's early in the morning...
Sigh. 'editors'.
artificial scarcity (Score:4, Insightful)
The Fiber I Care About (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this does mean that ship anchors are less likely to take down countries than before.
Re:Will this help EU/US? (Score:4, Insightful)
With all the spying going on, the less traffic that has to go through the states, the better.
Really hate those "domesday" predictions.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And when will the editors learn to read or at least use a spell checker?
Video capacity issues... (Score:4, Insightful)
DUH! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not really a breakthrough.
we've known this for years. And, the telcos and network owners keep telling us that bandwidth is scarce. It's not scarce. It's an infinitely scalable resource.
lay more fiber add more routers, it gives you more bandwidth.
They don't really want to pay for it. At this point, telcos and network owners are literally prohibiting progress on the Internet.
Concept Conflation (Score:2, Insightful)
As usual, the "journalist" seems to be conflating two different issues.
Yes, the last mile/local ISP is an issue for many people
Yes, the world/teleco's/googles may need more cross-continent fiber in order to provide network resiliency, increase service to under-served markets, increase capacity on intercontinental traffic, or provide alternate routes for competitive reasons.
Does solving one solve the other? NO.
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:3, Insightful)
Well you could use those lines and if one line goes down you could still route those people over to the other line. This routing would only decrease the bandwidth to what it is currently used while having both operational would increase bandwidth. So yeah it is kind of pointless it use that redundant line only in the instance of a break.
Also if you aren't actively monitoring that line you could have a break in your active one and have no backup. That way you would know when there was a break reroute traffic while you fix it.
I'm not a network guru but it seems kind of silly to have a bunch of black fiber.
BTW I won't be responding to anymore hateful comments from you. It was childish and unnecessary, and if you can't play nice I'll take my ball and leave.