

Microsoft Invests in 3 Undersea Cables to Improve Data Center Connectivity - Errorcod3
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/11/microsoft-invests-in-3-undersea-cable-projects-to-improve-its-data-center-connectivity/

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petewailes
Not surprising. Google already have two, and Facebook have one coming as well.

In case anyone is interested in more information about the cables, have a note
at [http://builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-
deep/](http://builtvisible.com/messages-in-the-deep/)

Disclosure- I built the map

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dmak
Does Amazon have one? How did you find out Facebook has one coming? I'm
assuming facebook needs one for their own data center, and if that's the case
then could this mean they want to enter a similar market as AWS?

~~~
amenghra
Facebook's cable is not their own dedicated cable but a shared resource:
[http://www.wired.com/2012/07/facebook-
submarine/](http://www.wired.com/2012/07/facebook-submarine/)

Why do you think contributing to cables would imply they want to compete AWS?

It's not necessary for a data center, they might want it to reduce latency, to
reduce operational costs or to increase bandwidth.

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DigitalSea
I wish someone would throw us Australians a bone and build a couple of more
cables. We are suffering from some serious congestion issues at the moment
because of limited capacity leading out of Australia. It is good to see that
companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Facebook realise that bettering
bandwidth for consumers will benefit them in the long run.

~~~
mapt
Just how much money would be required to fix this once and for all, if
Australia & New Zealand decided it was a national priority and approached it
with an infrastructural rather than profit-oriented basis, with a tolerance
for overkill and dark fiber?

I have a suspicion that building 40,000 terabits per second in ~10 undersea
links with the rest of the world would be a lot less than 1000x as expensive
as building a single undersea link at 40 terabits per second, or one new
undersea link every two years of economic pain amidst undersupply. The issue
is you couldn't _charge end-users_ 1000x more for it, or even 10x more for it,
so it doesn't make any sense for private actors to build: ISPs can't
reasonably capture value generated in the economy at large.

From what I'm told, the US built much of its actual fiber-miles count in the
late 1990's when projections were that bandwidth usage would grow
exponentially for a long time, and we were "running out" (with a high profit
margin on each small step forward to add to the supply). Then we figured out
how to do wavelength division multiplexing and all of a sudden an existing
fiber could carry 100x more information. This led to the existing players
going bankrupt, and the "Dark fiber" era, ten years of overshoot before we
started digging fiber lines again domestically on a large scale.

This oversupply enabled the Internet in the US to blossom. Last-mile issues
were all that existed for the longest time. If we had spent that decade
bottlenecked for lack of backbone & backhaul bandwidth, constantly bumping
into saturation of the existing links and frenzied construction of new links,
the Internet would be a very different place. A more metered place, with a
very high degree of rent-seeking by the existing players, and a lot of
bandwidth-intensive web ideas killed in their cradles.

Apparently in some other developed countries that joined the Internet scene
after this boom & bust, the government made it a priority to provide both
backbone and last-mile connectivity on an infrastructural basis without much
regard to profit, to even better success than the US.

~~~
vacri
_if Australia & New Zealand decided it was a national priority and approached
it with an infrastructural rather than profit-oriented basis_

The current conservative government in Australia has decided that internet is
a luxury, not a nation-building project, and scuttled the NBN, a project
intended to provide infrastructural improvement to the 'tubes. It ain't going
to be a 'national priority' here any time soon.

Which is weird, because business benefits from fast tubes a lot more than
consumers do, and usually the conservatives are the pro-business politicians.

~~~
bobbles
_Especially_ weird, that now their national long term plans include
specifically 'the technology to connect us all together' within the same
period of time they canned the NBN!

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mey
For those unaware, Hillsboro OR has Intel's R&D arm and several datacenters
(including ones still coming online).

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-
responsibil...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-
responsibility/intel-in-oregon.html) [http://www.viawest.com/data-
centers/oregon/brookwood-data-ce...](http://www.viawest.com/data-
centers/oregon/brookwood-data-center)

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ChuckMcM
Sadly this is the price of entry for a world class software service these
days. You need your own 10gbit + pipes around the planet. Now if someone could
make a really heat resistant cable you could make a mint just going straight
through the planet to the other side :-).

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higherpurpose
Do they get a discount if they allow the NSA to tap them?

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mildbow
Microsoft isn't the problem (this coming from someone who didn't take an
internship offer on ideological grounds).

They already have that discount (aka government contracts they would get
blacklisted for if they didn't agree).

The way to stop this isn't to make snarky comments about Microsoft since that
just builds up/reinforces distrust on a random company.

The way to stop this with the same amount of effort is to make snarky comments
about the US government/lack of oversight. _That_ will atleast reinforce
distrust towards the government. Enough of that _will_ lead to change.

Your mind is shaped by what you read.

~~~
xnull6guest
Much of what the government did (and does do) is not techically legal - in
that they can not force companies to disclose or backdoor access to
information beyond what is listed in the Patriot Act, CALEA and associated
constellations of law.

Various mechanisms are used to get partnerships with companies including
financial threat (QWest), legal threat (Yahoo), infiltration (Facebook), and
appeal (Microsoft, Google). If it is more difficult to get cooperation from a
company if they believe that customers will hate, snark and boycott them, or
if it will damage their image it will be more difficult for agencies to make
deals with companies in extralegal ways.

Discouraging customers from criticizing companies for _voluntarily_ making
deals doesn't seem fair to me. I think the OPs misgivings, however informed,
are about voluntary rather than compulsed, action taken by Microsoft
leadership.

~~~
mildbow
I had a whole reply typed up. But it basically boiled down to : hate the game,
don't hate the player.

So you give msft shit. Ok, some other corp will take its place. Change the way
the government works, maybe you fix the cause rather than the symptoms.

~~~
xnull6guest
I'm sorry you lost the text - it is so frustrating when that happens.

Getting the government to change itself is a game - and a more opaque one.
Which representatives in upcoming elections are clear wins for the way that
America is waging cyberwarfare, including its use of domestic surveillance?
There are no such choices. The complexity of the issues and the pressing
national security concerns (from an awakening Ottoman Empire, revisionist
Russia and ambitious China, to the hollowing of an old American-centered
European world).

The wise player, I think, doesn't only criticize Microsoft, AT&T, etc. The
wise player criticizes all of the players complicit in the game: voluntary
actors (like Microsoft), the Administration, shadow government, global
incentives, allied interests alike.

(The government itself would say: don't hate us, the player! Hate the world
game where we are compelled to reach for these powers or lose control of
[y]our global dominance.)

Hating the game means hating it all - not choosing an exclusive player. So I
think it makes sense to hate on Microsoft while hating on policy and
surveillance law.

~~~
mildbow
Actually, I do feel like tech hasn't doesn't what it could to provide for
greater transparency/accountability regarding our elected officials.

Going off on a slight tangent here, but a thought I've had is that politicians
aren't just evil/vote along party lines just because. They do it to stay in
power. Maybe if there was an app/platform/something that citizens could to go
to "pre-vote" on issues or crowdfund issues, maybe people's actual needs would
be addressed?

Ideally, a rep would say: here's the app you guys use. I'll vote on everything
exactly how my constituents tell me to vote. And, in doing so, just be a
direct proxy for the voting public.

