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Yeah title framing is a little misleading. They are track to be a part owner of 13% of subsea cables. The article is clearly focused on Meta but I don't think t

Yeah title framing is a little misleading. They are track to be a part owner of 13% of subsea cables. The article is clearly focused on Meta but I don't think they're an outlier among big tech. Pretty sure Google is the only big tech company to own their own private cables and they have a bunch.

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
Amazon has them too, anyone with a huge datacenter footprint and massive traffic to shift is going to want to own (part of) these systems eventually, it's extremely low risk and great reward.
- alphabetting 4y ago
  Amazon definitely has a lot of subsea investment but I don't think they fully own cables unless this WSJ piece is wrong. https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and-microsoft-weave-a-fiber-optic-web-of-power-11642222824?mod=hp_lead_pos8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and-microsof... There is an exception to big tech companies collaborating with rivals on the underwater infrastructure of the internet. Google, alone among big tech companies, is already the sole owner of three different undersea cables, and that total is projected by TeleGeography to reach six by 2023. Google has built and is building these solely owned-and-operated cables for two reasons, says Vijay Vusirikala, a senior director at Google responsible for all of the company’s submarine and terrestrial fiber infrastructure. The first is that the company needs them in order to make its own services, such as Google search and YouTube streaming, fast and responsive. The second is to gain an edge in the battle for customers for its cloud services.
  - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    Amazon owns 1/6th of CAP-1 (FB/Meta own the other 5/6ths).
- reilly3000 4y ago
  > low risk I’ll just leave this here. https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-threat-to-undersea-internet-cables/ https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-need-to-know-...
  - AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
    Physical damage is insured away. It's possible the insurance policies exclude (nation state) terrorism but any good nation state terrorist is going to do it in the most deniable way possible, probably by having a fishing boat "accidentally" drag anchor over your cable.
    - fragmede 4y ago
      The scary thing is it's not like the links are going unused, so nation state terrorist could severely cripple the Internet with a small number of accidental anchor drags.
bombcar 4y ago
Being a part owner of a subsea cable is effectively buying a percentage of bandwidth on said cable. But "Meta is buying bandwidth" doesn't sound as scary.
- MichaelZuo 4y ago
  It really discredits an organization when they put out a headline that misleading.

AdamJacobMuller 4y ago

Amazon has them too, anyone with a huge datacenter footprint and massive traffic to shift is going to want to own (part of) these systems eventually, it's extremely low risk and great reward.

alphabetting 4y ago
Amazon definitely has a lot of subsea investment but I don't think they fully own cables unless this WSJ piece is wrong. https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and-microsoft-weave-a-fiber-optic-web-of-power-11642222824?mod=hp_lead_pos8 https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-amazon-meta-and-microsof... There is an exception to big tech companies collaborating with rivals on the underwater infrastructure of the internet. Google, alone among big tech companies, is already the sole owner of three different undersea cables, and that total is projected by TeleGeography to reach six by 2023. Google has built and is building these solely owned-and-operated cables for two reasons, says Vijay Vusirikala, a senior director at Google responsible for all of the company’s submarine and terrestrial fiber infrastructure. The first is that the company needs them in order to make its own services, such as Google search and YouTube streaming, fast and responsive. The second is to gain an edge in the battle for customers for its cloud services.
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  Amazon owns 1/6th of CAP-1 (FB/Meta own the other 5/6ths).
reilly3000 4y ago
> low risk I’ll just leave this here. https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-threat-to-undersea-internet-cables/ https://www.politico.eu/article/everything-you-need-to-know-...
- AdamJacobMuller 4y ago
  Physical damage is insured away. It's possible the insurance policies exclude (nation state) terrorism but any good nation state terrorist is going to do it in the most deniable way possible, probably by having a fishing boat "accidentally" drag anchor over your cable.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    The scary thing is it's not like the links are going unused, so nation state terrorist could severely cripple the Internet with a small number of accidental anchor drags.

bombcar 4y ago

Being a part owner of a subsea cable is effectively buying a percentage of bandwidth on said cable. But "Meta is buying bandwidth" doesn't sound as scary.

MichaelZuo 4y ago
It really discredits an organization when they put out a headline that misleading.