North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
On 15/09/2008, at 10:36 PM, Joe Abley wrote:
yes, for Australia, certainly. A number of us were using E1 inverse MUX units to pull higher channel rates out of the circuits. Same thing happened a few years later with muxing up 155Mbpsd circuits. There was a lot of satellite transmission sold around that time on PanAmSat, IntelSat and Loral transponders, and it's not as if anybody was really using satellite out of choice. There are only so many discrete E1s you can comfortably inverse-mux together before it's really not worth bothering. heh heh - we ran out of cable capacity before we ran out of cascading inverse muxes at the time! Satellite really was a very inferior choice.
The original telegraph circuits in the latter half of the 19th century were largely overland, but, unless there are markets you want to intercept with in the middle, undersea tends to be a better option where you consider all aspects (territorial rights, political issues, total length, stability etc etc). There was a very informative article by Neal Stephenson in Wired some years back that was published at about the time FLAG was being constructed which still is about the best article on the submarine cable business I've read. Everyone interested in this submarine cable game except Joe should read it. The problem with the routes in that part of the word include: the Wallace line, territorial waters, shallow waters, the Luzon strait, the stability of overland segments, the size of the markets in the middle, the cost and availability of the alternatives, and the major factor that spending 100% of your investment money to optimise 80% of your traffic needs makes more sense than many other investment strategies - hence the outcome that the Pacific has become the heavily favoured route for submarine cable systems in this area of the world.
nah - more fun to watch you speculate Joe.
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