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New Internet cable between U.S. and Asia to be disaster-proof

The advent of the Internet has brought a completely new dimension to globalization, but the system isn’t perfect. Last December, an undersea earthquake off the coast of Taiwan disrupted Internet cables, causing communications to be down for several days. A new pact formed last week between 17 major telecommunications companies hopes to avoid a repeat of that situation with plans to complete a $500 million undersea fiber optic cable between Southeast Asia and the U.S., which they claim will be relatively safe from natural disasters.

The project is called the Asia-America Gateway and will span 12,428-miles, connecting the western U.S. with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii. Telekom Malaysia is leading the band of 16 other companies and says the connection will “provide an alternative and a more secure link for traffic from the region to the U.S.A. ... This low-risk route was designed to avoid the volatile and hazardous Pacific Ring, thus mitigating the effects from natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis.”

Alcatel-Lucent and NEC have been awarded the contract for the development of the link. The fiber optic cable is already under construction and is projected to begin operating in December 2008.

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Sweet
By Fubar0606 on 4/30/2007 7:53:21 PM , Rating: 2
Sounds awesome, cant wait till all the US is wired through Fiber optics, just think u could download stuff a gig or larger in seconds...




RE: Sweet
By dcalfine on 4/30/07, Rating: -1
RE: Sweet
By stromgald on 4/30/2007 7:59:48 PM , Rating: 5
Um . . . fiber optics carry light, not electricity. It might blind a few fish down there though if it snapped somehow.


RE: Sweet
By DragonMaster0 on 4/30/2007 9:29:56 PM , Rating: 2
The fibers traveling in the ocean have repeaters which run off electricity IIRC.


RE: Sweet
By Samus on 5/1/2007 1:56:03 AM , Rating: 3
the repeaters run off of solar power. the fiber light is uv and multispectrum. i heard the repeaters are pretty efficient: light is extremely amplified at both ends, so by the time it reaches the other end (and being sucked of lumens by the repeaters) it is still strong enough to decode. no electricity actually travels in the cable. it is, however, stored in capacitance at the repeaters, which there are sure to be a dozens of.

for all we know, this cable might be crazy thick and have enough fibers in it to hold light across previously-unheard of distances.


RE: Sweet
By AaronAxvig on 5/1/2007 2:34:34 PM , Rating: 2
RE: Sweet
By borowki on 5/1/2007 8:00:50 AM , Rating: 2
Yes. One of the problems that AT&T ran into while building the first transaltantic optic cable was that the electricity would generate a magnetic field that attracts sharks. They would chew up the cable, getting themselves electricuted in the process.


RE: Sweet
By jay401 on 5/1/2007 8:30:48 AM , Rating: 2
whoah totally not jawesome, dudes :(


RE: Sweet
By kmiller1700 on 5/1/2007 4:28:43 PM , Rating: 2
haha
jawesome


RE: Sweet
By dice1111 on 4/30/2007 8:02:54 PM , Rating: 2
You need to do some homework...

Then go research about fiber optics. *sigh* kids...


RE: Sweet
By DragonMaster0 on 4/30/2007 9:34:12 PM , Rating: 1
There are already about seven of these fiber cables running between US and other continents, and there were no problems.

Electricity in water just separates the H20 into H2 and O2. Nothing can really happen in the water, there's no fire to get the H2 to explode. Maybe some fishes could be affected, but that's it.


RE: Sweet
By Brainonska511 on 4/30/2007 10:28:06 PM , Rating: 1
No, electricity ionizes the water. H2 and O2 are gases and would not be what water separates when ionized. It would separate into H+ and OH-, which it already does on its own, just more so with electricity running through so that there could be more electron transference.


RE: Sweet
By Comdrpopnfresh on 5/1/2007 12:20:45 AM , Rating: 5
someone failed chemistry- its called electrolysis- when running electricity through H2O you get h2 and o2- try it with a nine-volt and some wires


RE: Sweet
By fishmonger12 on 4/30/2007 8:23:36 PM , Rating: 2
Say an electrical line did snap underwater. Would it electrocute all the fish in the pacific!!!?

Physics major please come in and explain I just got done with exams.


RE: Sweet
By Macungah on 4/30/2007 8:48:49 PM , Rating: 2
If a supposed electrical line does snap, it would electrocute around the vicinity, until the energy is "diluted" for lack of a better word. It's why people don't die all of a sudden from electric eels, etc.


RE: Sweet
By therealnickdanger on 5/1/2007 8:23:59 AM , Rating: 1
I think that the energy output by the broken line would have to exceed the conductive potential of the surrounding molecules in order to travel that far... or something to that effect. Does salt water even conduct as well as fresh water? So many water and mineral molecules make up the ocean that I don't think we could generate the needed power to "electrocute" the ocean. For some reason I'm thinking you wouldn't even get shocked if you were within a couple feet... I've never thought about it before. :P

I'm sure if we could, we would have made a weapon out of it by now.


RE: Sweet
By Seer on 5/1/2007 11:28:56 PM , Rating: 2
Pure water (deionized/distilled) is not a conductor. You need salts (such as table salt, NaCl) that break up into ions in order to conduct electricity.


RE: Sweet
By Rugar on 5/1/2007 9:55:40 AM , Rating: 3
Not a physics major, but I am a fisheries person who regularly uses an elctro-fisher in my research. It would not be possible to "electrocute" fish in a marine system unless you were talking about a *HUGE* current in the cable. This is because salt water is far, far more conductive than fresh water. In fresh water, you can use a relatively low current to stun fish because the water has a high resistance in comparison to the fish. (Fish have more salts inside than the water outside does) Because of this, applied current "seeks" the fish instead of passing harmlessly through the water. In salt water, the fish have a higher resistance than the surrounding water and the current "passes" them by...

That's extremely simplified but hopefully understandable.


Sheesh
By ebakke on 5/1/2007 5:35:35 AM , Rating: 5
With the exception of a few intelligent posters, this page is filled with absolute idiots who only wish they had something worthwhile to say.

Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.




RE: Sheesh
By TomZ on 5/1/07, Rating: -1
RE: Sheesh
By Homerboy on 5/1/2007 9:08:48 AM , Rating: 1
actually no. He's entirely right. The ignorance and general stupidity in these posts is simply amazing. I thought school was back in session from spring break...


RE: Sheesh
By lukasbradley on 5/1/2007 10:24:22 AM , Rating: 2
The quality of posts has degraded over the past few months on all topics.


RE: Sheesh
By bubbacub616 on 5/1/2007 1:05:49 PM , Rating: 2
I'll second that - where is masher2 to save the day?


RE: Sheesh
By LatinMessiah on 5/1/2007 1:36:04 PM , Rating: 2
That's around the time I began posting here. :|


Speed?
By Doormat on 5/1/2007 12:53:37 AM , Rating: 2
How many Gb/s? Thats what matters!




RE: Speed?
By MGSsancho on 5/1/2007 1:37:43 AM , Rating: 2
1.92Tb


RE: Speed?
By BladeVenom on 5/1/2007 5:57:52 AM , Rating: 2
That's going to be a lot of porn.


Telekom Malaysia
By DTAllTheBest on 5/1/2007 12:39:54 PM , Rating: 2
Telekom Malaysia is leading the band of 16 other companies

I'm a Chinese living in Malaysia. What I can tell you all is that this ISP is really sucks. The broadband I am using is very expensive and the download speed are very slow.
This company earn lots of money every year and don't want to improves their service. I gets very angry every time when their server down and I need to escalate to them about this problem.

Suck ass company "TM" `~!@#$%^&*()_+




RE: Telekom Malaysia
By Rugar on 5/1/2007 2:14:11 PM , Rating: 2
You should have to deal with Charter which is the only broadband available to me on the islnad I live on....

"Oh, we're sorry. The cable crossing the channel to the island developed a leak and service will be interrupted while we fix the problem."

"When will that be?"

"We are sending out a team to assess the problem next week."

GAAAARGH!


RE: Telekom Malaysia
By Scorpion on 5/1/2007 3:29:32 PM , Rating: 2
That's why they call it "Island Time."

They've got to drink their rum colada's and catch a few rays before they spend 5 minutes working before they do it all over again. :)


???
By Comdrpopnfresh on 5/1/2007 12:12:37 AM , Rating: 3
relatively safe != disaster proof




RE: ???
By lukasbradley on 5/1/2007 10:25:55 AM , Rating: 2
I thought the same thing. At the time, the Titanic was unsinkable.

Our Universe is pretty damn creative at enforcing Murphy's Law.


Cost
By feelingshorter on 4/30/2007 10:17:56 PM , Rating: 2
So that works out to $40231 per mile. It sure got cheaper, last I herd it was like $50k a mile last time I saw it on the discovery channel. FYI, fiber optic (the core of it, not shell to cover it) is made of glass and not plastic.




RE: Cost
By theapparition on 5/1/2007 8:17:25 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
FYI, fiber optic (the core of it, not shell to cover it) is made of glass and not plastic.

Of course, glass has much higher transmition rate than plastic. All industrial fibers are glass.


Power
By Egglick on 5/1/2007 12:12:20 AM , Rating: 2
It's true that fibre optics use light instead of electricity, but the source needs power to generate the light, and the many repeaters necessary for this application also need power.

With that said, I'm sure that fibre optics use substantially less power than a traditional copper wire. It's doubtful that a line break of either type would have any noticeable effect beyond a small radius.

Consider the ridiculous volume of the Pacific.




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