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Building a subsea cable to better connect Africa
- supernova87a 6y agoThis doesn't directly have to do with this article, but in case some people have not seen it before: https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/ "Mother Earth Mother Board" This is a good hour-long read, one of the most interesting descriptions I ever read of all that goes into funding, building, operating subsea fiber optic cables that connect us around the world. It's a couple years out of date, but very entertaining. Goes from the physics of transmission all the way to the ships and people who lay the cable.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 6y agoNote to other readers: It requires 2 hours to read. This is a timeless classic from Wired, written by Neal Stephenson in 1996. I love this article not only because of the article itself, but its enthusiasm and energy from the age it was written in. It was an age with a bright future where everything seems possible. Back at that time, Wired represented the avant-garde of Silicon Valley (including the fact that Neal Stephenson being the author) that was going to revolutionize everything through computing and the Internet, the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization, and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control. In particular, this article had a clear techno-libertarian overtone, about how authoritarianism and monopoly would be defeated through disruptive innovation. One goal of constructing FLAG (the cable) was explicitly to reduce the reliance of the infrastructure of the United States and to challenge the role played by traditional ISP over the control. The article even mentioned the early cypherpunk movement (in the mid of the first Crypto War), and acknowledged "Virtually all communications between countries take place through a very small number of bottlenecks, and the available bandwidth simply isn't that great. Even outfits like FLAG don't really grok the Internet." But FLAG was still seen as a step moving towards the correct direction and the beginning of the new network order. The dream eventually came to an end. Wired-inspired DotCom bubble busted. Although FLAG was the first move to break U.S. and traditional ISP's monopoly, future projects in the next 10 years didn't quite accomplish this goal. Silicon Valley became the new giant establishment and monopoly (the critics say massive deregulation was partially responsible). Authoritarian regimes have done a good job preventing the information flowing online to bring liberal political changes. And the Internet has been seized as the means of mass surveillance. Nevertheless, the late 90s was a great age to be alive with that dream.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- supernova87a 6y agoIt's probably like when the first cellphone inventors imagined the freedom and productivity that portability would offer humanity. And didn't realize that a sizeable portion of the eventual effort would turn into serving up cute cat videos and trying to prevent people from yelling at each other based on fake news.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 6y ago> would turn into serving up cute cat videos Cute cats, per se, is not the problem. Did you know the "Cute cat theory of digital activism" [0]? Literally, the first online cat meme posters imagined the freedom and productivity that cats would offer to digital liberty. > trying to prevent people from yelling at each other based on fake news This turns out to be a much bigger problem that couldn't be solved using cat memes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_activism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cute_cat_theory_of_digital_act...
- andrepd 6y ago> the free and fast flow of information enables decentralization, and would liberate us from all the old forms of political control. Of course, it turned out precisely the opposite.
- shadowgovt 6y agoThe fundamental flaw in the original thinking on this topic was that people saw the digital frontier as a new wild west of sorts, where old rules and established lines of power did not apply and a bold, adventurous spirit could carve out a new realm for themselves. The thinking wasn't wrong at all. It merely failed to extrapolate to what happened to the American wild west after the era of the gold rush. The vast, vast majority of humanity doesn't want to live in the wild west. And when given the option between a laissez-faire no rules world where those with better understanding of the natural rules triumph and a structured society, structure wins every time. Nobody is really forced to use Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Google. Or Amazon. But they are, all of them, vastly more convenient than the DIY alternatives which were the only option when the internet was young.
- miguelxpn 6y agoInteresting, Stephenson later used some of that on the plot of Cryptonomicon.
- Cyph0n 6y ago> Couple years 1996... But I will definitely be adding it to my reading list!
- rainbowzootsuit 6y agoOne of my favorite articles of all time. I still have the hardcopy somewhere around.
- advisedwang 6y agoSome more technical details @ https://www.2africacable.com/ https://www.2africacable.com/: > go live in 2023/4 > design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system > 16 fibre pairs > Cable burial depth has also been increased by 50% Patners: * China Mobile * Facebook * Orange * STC * telecomegypt * Vodafone * WIOCC
- jeffbee 6y agoInteresting in terms of scale. That's only about twice the capacity of the fiber connecting California and the almost negligibly-populated nation of Chile. On a per-capita basis Africa needs a lot of cables to Asia and Europe to gain parity.
- nine_k 6y agoBut past the thin mountainous band of Chile lay large,populous, and reasonably advanced nations of Brazil and Argentina. Likely they share some of the bandwidth.
- ejanus 6y agoGoogle [1] is building one too but for their internal use. [1] https://businesstech.co.za/news/broadband/326323/google-is-building-a-super-fast-subsea-cable-between-portugal-and-south-africa/ https://businesstech.co.za/news/broadband/326323/google-is-b...
- teruakohatu 6y agoFor comparison the main internet cable connecting my country, New Zealand, to the USA as 10 tb capacity and the cable connecting us to Australia has around 20 tb, so we have a theoretical maximum of 30 tb of overseas capacity for 4.8 million people (in practice Australian traffic will also be routed over our USA cable). We should have an additional 70+ tb by the end of 2022 after cable upgrades (again, shared with Australia). Africa has 253x the population of NZ.
- cnorthwood 6y ago16 fibre pairs doesn't seem like very much? I wonder what the constraining factors are, as surely the material costs of having hundreds of pairs are negligible compared to the install costs? Is it amplification?
- dewey 6y agoIf you want to find out more about other subsea cables there's always: https://www.submarinecablemap.com https://www.submarinecablemap.com
- ape4 6y agoThere are already a bunch along the coast of Africa. Not to say they shouldn't have more.
- bilbo0s 6y agoThey should get as many as they can. It's not good to have only the west, or only china, or only russia controlling their internet access points. If they play this right, I'm sure china and the west will literally drown them in bandwidth.
- saagarjha 6y agoVery cool. Lots of Equinix and Huawei Marine!
- penetrarthur 6y agoBut Starlink.
- russdill 6y agoInitial versions of Starlink will not have laser links and will require ground stations to operate.
- drcross 6y agoStarlink has its place but it's not anywhere close to reaching the terrabits that fiber optic can do.
- person_of_color 6y agoDo you need ITAR to work on Starlink?
- RyanShook 6y agoWhat are the economics of private investment in subsea cables? Maybe Facebook traffic gets prioritized?
- creddit 6y agoPresumably they own some of the bandwidth.
- jeffbee 6y agoYou don’t really prioritize traffic on a wave. Either you own the wave or nah.
- mike_d 6y agoIt is just like overland routes. Imagine you have a bunch of delivery trucks on a highway and you are paying tolls along the way. At some number of trucks it makes sense to just pave your own road next to the highway. FB is planning 10-15 years ahead because Africa is the next part of the world that will develop a middle class.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoFacebook can't gain market traction in Africa if there's no decent internet, so regardless of whether FB will have a direct financial benefit in the connection, they will have an indirect one. Assuming FB wins over either Chinese social networks or African-developed and operated ones of course.
- ejanus 6y agoFB is the only social media in town in most of Africa's countries.
- atlgator 6y agoI love how they make their mission sound so humanitarian when it's really about monthly active user growth and data profiles for everyone in the world... that they can sell. This whole movement of masking profiteering as social justice is sickening.
- frugalboy 6y agoDid you miss the part about Africa getting a 37000km subsea cable that quadruples their network capacity? What does the motive matter if the end result is the same?
- spacephysics 6y agoDoes the end justify the means? https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_end_justifies_the_means https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/the_end_justifies_the_means
- drcross 6y agoWait a goddamn minute. FB had a chance to do something positive for the world with internet.org but they actually backed out when they were forced to obey net neutrality laws. Make no mistake about it- this is a profit seeking motive with a potential side effect of increased connectivity. You are a product to Facebook, something they sell and once consumed your privacy and rights are left fissured and broken. Don't misconstrue your relationship to them.
- throwaway4715 6y agoA "potential side effect"? Don't be ridiculous. The primary purpose is increased connectivity. Will they profit off that increased connectivity? Yes. But so will a lot of others. Including many Africans who will be able to take advantage of new opportunities unlocked by connecting the continent.
- justapassenger 6y agoIt’s not a zero sum game. Facebook making profit doesn’t mean that other companies and people won’t also profit from it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bogomipz 6y agoI'm confused by why they are calling this cable system "transformative" as the periphery of Africa is already well served by existing submarine cable: https://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/ https://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/ It seems like getting terrestrial fiber into the interior of the continent would be much more impactful. For instance SEACOM was completed in 2008 with landing stations in Tanzania and Kenya but it took 2 years to lay the terrestrial cable to get places like Rwanda and Uganda connected to it: https://www.reuters.com/article/ozabs-rwanda-telecoms-idAFJOE72F07D20110316 https://www.reuters.com/article/ozabs-rwanda-telecoms-idAFJO...
- iso947 6y agoI haven’t had problems with EASSy from Kenya to Europe, but my virtuous run over epic from mobassa to nairobi on 3 separate cables including one overhead on electricity pylons. I’ve had no end of problems with those recently, when all 3 are out at the same time.
- badrabbit 6y agoI would be curious to know how many networks use macsec/.1ae for their transocean fiber. It makes a big difference in detering surveillance.
- mike_d 6y agoZero. MACSec is for LANs. Corporations like Google and Facebook leasing wavelengths are doing E2E encryption in their own upstream gear, but your random ISP hauling cat videos isn't.
- badrabbit 6y agoI've seen 100Gbe gear specifically support it as a feature
- jauer 6y agoFacebook and Google aren't leasing wavelengths and haven't for years. Sometimes they lease strands, sometimes they own the fiber in the ground and lease excess to traditional carriers. They own the longhaul equipment that puts waves on the strands. They own the transponders that takes normal 100GigE and converts it to waves. Random ISP may not be running MACSec, but a significant portion of subsea cable traffic does run over MACSec as it goes between datacenters and from datacenters to POPs where those cat videos get handed off to ISPs in the same region.
- nujabe 6y agoThis is tremendous news, I've been waiting for this kind of investment in Africa from big tech for years. I remember talking to an engineer from AWS that helps builds their data centers about the challenges of building data centers in Africa and why none of the big tech companies have barely made any investments inside the continent outside of SA. He mentioned that a much bigger problem than the lack of energy infrastructure that everyone assumes is the biggest hurdle is the lack of connectivity, both to Africa and between countries. I hope this project paves the way for next phase which is interconnectivity between countries, which could finally lead to the digital economic revolution really take place in the continent. You can't have a 'digital economy' with no data centers.
- kitteh 6y agoThere are several challenges with building a cloud type service in such locations. Connecting it to the rest of the world is one (backbone links, etc.). The other is a very local problem: incumbent telcos who generally have the support of the government. These entities know you are playing in their territory and they will make you pay more when you're in their backyard. They'll be happy to peer with you out of their market, but they want you to pay up locally. It helps when there is competition for broadband and enterprise connectivity and those players work well, but it's the incumbents who want to get their beaks wet that result in having to pass a high cost to customers. This is super common in South America, Middle East and Asia. South Africa is a bit better now but before it used to be worse. Also this can extend to getting local/metro fiber if you want to launch multiple datacenters. Several countries won't even permit you to contract out building dark fiber in the metropolitan environment - they'll force you to buy much more expensive lit/wavelength transport so that you have to pay them to scale up at every 10G or 100G increment.
- estsauver 6y agoIt's an incredibly large problem. From NBO, pings to any AWS DC were about 200ms as of 2017. I think Azure and GCP were also worse at the time. They now have a pop in Nairobi so if you're using accelerator it might be a lot better now, but still a huge challenge. There's also in part a trust issue. So many suppliers are unreliable, the biggest firms end up doing a ton in house.
- soliosis 6y agoI live in Africa. Say what you want, but we need this. Our internet prices are too high and the quality too low, you can't even start a youtube channel and upload a decent short video without it taking a day. Yes there is always a concern about commercial profiteering getting in the way of the quality of this, but that's to be said for every form of making profit. We can solve that problem on a systemic level, for now let's take what we can get.
- encom 6y ago>We are committed to bringing more people online to a faster internet — and with 3.5 billion people globally unconnected, there is still a lot to do. Yea, that's 3.5 billion people whose lives haven't been datamined yet by these scumbags.
- erikrothoff 6y agoThanks for the insightful and well thought out comment.
- NullPrefix 6y agoThanks for the insightful and well thought out comment.
- beerandt 6y agoInterpreting this wrong at first made me realize the colonial-esque, modern day exploitation parallels between China and Facebook, especially wrt Africa. China building ports and rail (with predatory, sovereignty-usurping lending terms); Facebook building fiber (with ROI measured not in bandwith-revenue, but captive audience eyeballs). Military bases vs data centers. Power projected as global military presence vs global advertising market. The usefulness to each "colonizer" is nothing to do with benevolent investment at a modest interest rate, but exploitative access, while slinging PR about providing basic needs to humanity. Maybe I'm being overly cynical. I generally would be inclined to view this type of deal as win-win, everyone benefits. On the other hand, between Facebook and China, I honestly don't know who I would trust less with my data. Or who to be more suspicious of, being subject to their algorithms, social engineering, propaganda, agenda, global ambition, etc. Of course I say this having multiple vectors of internet access and the benefit of not being subject to Chinese sovereignty.
- erikrothoff 6y agoSo a company creating a digital profile on you to sell targeted advertising vs a country, which is effectively a dictatorship, who has a history of murdering and imprisoning dissenters without trial, are here lumped into the same evil? Can we please take down the Facebook hate back to earth?
- curiousgal 6y agoI have a dream that the world will stop using "Africa" as a catch-all phrase for "some African countries".
- Tepix 6y agoDo you have reason to believe that the coastal countries with uplinks will not provide connectivity to their neighbouring countries?
- teddyh 6y agoThey will surely have connections, but why would they provide transit? Is this a trickle-down theory of connectivity?
- estsauver 6y agoI believe many inland countries get their transit through neighbors. For example, I believe Rwanda gets ~99% of their data through Uganda/Kenya and Tanzania, and only a tiny bit goes through Satellite. I can't say for sure nothing goes out through the DRC or Uganda/South Sudan, but I'm pretty sure it's quite, quite small.
- 101404 6y agoThat is correct. Plus limited satellite uplinks. The undersea cable connectivity especially in East Aftica sucks. I have the feeling the primary reason why these cables exist is because they connect South Africa to the huge cables between Europe and East Asia.
- curiousgal 6y agoI already know that they do not. This isn't the first subsea cable that goes around Africa.
- Tepix 6y agoThe website is light on details. What are those dots in front of the coast of Sierra Leone and Liberia? Why are there two dots at Senegal? What islands in the Atlantic will be connected? It looks as if the Capverdes are left out but the Canaries might have a connection to this cable (but there is no white dot there). I wonder if St. Helena will get lucky. Details please!
- ksec 6y agoDoes anyone have any idea how much would such project cost? I am wondering on the break down of the cost and which part is the most expensive. Because if "layering" cable is expensive wouldn't be make more sense to layer more cable in on go? 180Tbps doesn't seems a lot for a continent as big as Africa.