> Not to mention that the Taiwan straits earthquake
showed a
> clear lack of physical diversity on a number of
important
> Pacific routes, which I know some companies are laying
fiber
> to address.
Anyone who took the trouble to read the two articles knows
that one of the two cables is a USA-to-China direct cable
that does not hop through Japan. This is really part of a
larger connectivity story for the People's Republic of
China
along with the trans-Russia cable being built by Russia's
railway-backed TTC and China Unicom.
http://europe.tmcnet.com/news/2007/09/20/2954870.htm
I wouldn't be surprised if this is somehow connected with
GLORIAD as well. In any case, the USA-China direct route is
clearly avoiding the Taiwan Straits weak point.
And the other cable, which Google is involved in, is
connecting
the USA and Australia, a country that has always had
connectivity
issues, especially pricing issues. This has led to a much
higher
use of web proxies in Australia to reduce international
traffic
levels and this may be the key to why, Google, an
application
developer and ASP/SaaS operator, is trying to build a cable
link
to the major English language market in Asia-Pacific.
Seems to me both builds are adressing diversity issues in
different
ways, and if this results in a bandwidth glut to the region,
that
may be part of the plan.
--Michael Dillon
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