Access and usage of the Internet is growing rapidly. Fueling
this growth is Social Media and Cloud Computing.
So it should come as no surprise that Facebook and
Microsoft would take it up on themselves to lay their own Fiber Optic Cable as
reported in the article “Facebook
and Microsoft to Build Fiber Optic Cable Across Atlantic”, published May
27th 2016 by Drew Fitzgerald, The Wall Street
Journal.
The undersea fiber optic cable is called
“MAREA” after the Spanish word for “tide”. It’s
slated to begin construction in August 2016 and it's being laid by Telxius, the
infrastructure company owned by global communications giant Telefónica. When
the 4,100 miles Fiber optic cable, which stretches from Virginia Beach,
Virginia to Bilbao, Spain is completed, it will provide Facebook and Microsoft
with some additional 160 Tbps of bandwidth.
This translates to faster cloud computing af the two
partners race towards a completion date of October 2017 as reported in “Facebook
and Microsoft team up to lay a massive internet cable across the Atlantic”,
published May 26, 2016 By Nick Statt, The
Verge.
More importantly, it'll also position them to serve
their increasing customer base in the following countries:
1. Europe
2. Africa
3. The
Middle East
4. Asia
So why are companies that traditionally do Tech now
dabbleing in Telecoms?
Facebook
and Microsoft Undersea Fiber Optic Cable – Google’s cable to help with
increasing Traffic
Google had already completed the interconnection of
their own 9,000-kilometer FASTER undersea fiber optic in June 2015 as
reported in the article “Google's
60Tbps Pacific cable welcomed in Japan”, published June 23, 2015 By Tim
Hornyak , PC World.
With a bandwidth of 60 Tbps, their cable stretches
from Shima, Mie Prefecture, east of Osaka to Oregon on the Western coast of USA
and has the support of telecom carriers KDDI of Japan, SingTel of Singapore,
Global Transit of Malaysia, China Mobile International and China Telecom
Global.
This isn't surprising; the amount of Data that these
Telecom Providers process and transmit necessitates that they have to have
their own Telecom Infrastructure instead of leasing Infrastructure from Telecom
Providers as noted in “Facebook
and Microsoft are laying a giant cable across the Atlantic”, published
05.26.16 by cade Metz, Wired.
By taking up the role of the traditional Telecoms,
Facebook is ensuring that they have the bandwidth to serve their 1.65 billion
users and Microsoft the bandwidth to manage their Azure, Bing, Xbox Live and Office 365
programs.
In the process, they'll be able to offload some of the
traffic from the traditional telcos and expand Internet access to countries
such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East where Internet censorship makes using
their service difficult.
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