Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

The Pacific and Southeast Asia have two major telecom hubs: Tokyo and Singapore. Tokyo's status reflects its importance as the capital of one of Asia's largest economies with huge trade and financial flows with the United States as well as a defense treaty. Tokyo dominates Japan like Paris does France. Singapore's emergence reflects Hong Kong's downfall due to the Chinese government's failure to honor its commitment to HK autonomy. China requires any political candidate for HK office to be approved by it. Hence every HK politician is de facto a Beijing puppet. Secondly, China's security laws allow the arrest of anyone criticizing the Chinese government. The collapse of HK's rule of law is illustrated by numerous arrests of anyone peacefully opposing the government. You can go to jail for wearing a T-shirt advocating HK independence. In contrast, Singapore is neutral in the geopolitical war between the US and China and its judges are independen...

At the beginning of the third millennium almost all Trans-Atlantic cables directly linked the US or Canada to either Ireland or the UK. Flag North landed at Northport, New York, and Bude, UK. Hibernia North (EXA North) was a rare exception. It came ashore at Halifax and also in Southport, UK. Yellow touched ground on Long Island and at Bude. AC2 came ashore also at Brookhaven and Bude. Hibernia South (EXA South) landed in Halifax and also at Dublin. Finally, Apollo North touched ground at Brookhaven and Bude. Clearly this is inadequate physical diversity in terms of landing points and cable landing stations. It is highly cost effective because subsea cables can share common terrestrial infrastructure, but cost and resiliency are sworn enemies. There is almost always a tradeoff. Almost all Trans-Atlantic traffic went to the 9th floor Telx facility at 60 Hudson and the 111 8th Avenue data centre in Manhattan. In London the destination was almost invariably the Telehouse North and East da...