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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 12 2015, @07:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-rid-of-the-cat5-cable-we-streched-across dept.

Microsoft has invested in two new undersea cables that will connect North America with Ireland, and plans to extend investment to new cables connecting America and Asia:

"Over the past 9 months, Microsoft has been significantly investing in subsea and terrestrial dark fiber capacity by engaging in fiber partnerships that span multiple oceans and continents," Redmond network enablement bigwig David Crowley said in a blog post. On Monday, the software giant announced partnerships with Hibernia and Aqua Comms, each of which will provide a cable that links Microsoft's North American infrastructure with data centers in Ireland, and from there to the UK.

In addition, Crowley said Microsoft has joined a consortium of companies that are working to build the first-ever physical landing station connecting North America to Asia, in what will be known as the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network. Besides Microsoft, other NCP consortium members include Chinese firms China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom; Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom; South Korea's KT Corporation; and Japan's SoftBank Mobile. The undersea cables for the effort will be supplied by New Jersey–based TE SubCom.

Microsoft isn't the only US tech firm investing in undersea network cables, though. Last August, Google said it would invest $300m in a set of six fiber pairs linking the US West Coast with Chikura and Shima in Japan. Those cables are expected to go online in the second quarter of next year, offering hypothetical total bandwidth of 60Tbps. The NCP consortium, meanwhile, claims its cables will supply up to 80Tbps.

Facebook has invested millions in Asia Pacific Gateway undersea cables. The Register is also reporting on a new land link between Perth and Sydney in Australia. Here's a map of submarine cables across the world.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by arslan on Tuesday May 12 2015, @11:24PM

    by arslan (3462) on Tuesday May 12 2015, @11:24PM (#182148)

    Not that NSA conspiracy theories aren't pertinent... Looks like MS is gearing up in the cloud space. Amazon has their own global private fiber if I'm not mistaken, no I don't have any online reference, I did hear this from them on stage in the AWS summit recently.

    Amazon customizes a lot of things for AWS anytime they think they can improve performance and get better stability over commodity resources. This includes building their own power sub stations, network equipment and firmware, etc. They are way ahead of any other cloud providers at this point.

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