In related news Google announced South Africa as the location for its first Cloud Region in Africa. Some arguments I saw against this in comments was possibly poor global connectivity. Also some commenters lamented that Nigeria would also be a good candidate for a region. This cable looks to address both of those points.
While latency to the rest of the world is high, the connectivity is actually pretty decent over the last couple of years. For around 50 USD per month I get a 100Mbps residential fibre connection, and I get close to the maximum speed to the US or Europe.
That is not quite the same things as the dedicated connections that AWS/Google would want between their data centres, but it's not the same connectivity issues we struggled with 15 years ago when we only had one or two subsea cables.
One of South Africa's largest and most serious independent datacenter operators (Teraco) was recently acquired by Digital Realty, the US-based behemoth.
That helps with the West coast, but there are also huge population centers around Lake Victoria/Kenya/Ethiopia that won't have the benefit of a subsea cable?
It's very confusing to me. South Africa is really far out of the way. I guess a 2000 mile round trip from Lagos isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and maybe Kenyans have better connectivity with a data center in the ME or India.
I like to ask non-techies how they imagine their text messages go from the US to Europe. Most people think it is some form of wireless communication like satellite or cellular. They are quite surprised when they realize that it is just one really long string over the Atlantic.
It is a highly automated process. It is also not as highly regulated as other construction projects, as the cable won't kill anybody. There are also no vested interests that want internet connectivity to remain bad in Africa.
I agree. UCLA is building 1 dorm building right now and it's estimated to cost $1.5 billion. Being a Californian real estate project it will no doubt have cost overruns.
Any news of contributions to africa’s development make me happy. I dont know how to describe the feeling. I see the continent as a hidden gem. I am saddened that europe didnt take such initiative and doesnt promote more substantial investment. It’s literarily right next from us.
> The Investment Package will facilitate projects in submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cables, as well as cloud and data infrastructures. It will also support regulatory frameworks promoting a digital transition that put people at the centre and the principles of trusted connectivity, such as data protection.
> According to a brief (and somewhat detail-thin) explainer that the EU put out, the Global Gateway Investment Package will focus on infrastructure that can facilitate trade and mobility. Also included is a EurAfrica Gateway Cable – an under-sea fibre optic network that will connect sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Europe. Another focus is electrification – 600m Africans still lack access to electricity. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/cas/news-events/news/details/europe-p...
You never get that with fiber optics to start with - total internal reflection implies the light is traveling a fairly complicated geometry anyway. To do a straight line path it wouldn't be a fiber cable, it would be a tube which you'd have to pressurize and then do a fair bit of work to try and keep from flexing out of alignment (although 3 reflections as opposed to hundreds of thousands probably helps).
As someone who grew up in East Africa and remembers the days when there wasn't a single submarine cable connecting my country to the rest of the world. I'm happy for West Africa but hope that the East gets some more love soon too :)
I'm speculating but that must mean data flowing through. If I understand correctly, capacity is leased to other tiers of the network. So "launched" would presumably mean that capacity is actively being sold and used now.
I was also curious about this: they mention a few times that it’s a privately owned cable, does that also imply it will be used privately (eg only Google services), or will other ISPs be able to rent capacity on it?
Transit is sold in bulk and peered at exchange points. There are SLAs, different rates etc. It's not much different from other kinds of resources, but I don't think it's nearly as automatized as it should be.
Google has a lot of failures of their own but they seem at least semi-committed to an open internet (with actual ethical standards), something I can't exactly say for Zuckerberg
For a company with such a competitive moat in global internet bandwidth, i often wonder why they simply don't undercut AWS and Azure on their egress fees and thus cloud bills?
Free unlimited egress would completely change cloud economics.
It's going to happen anyway, either wait to be disrupted by the likes of Cloudflare or do it now and disrupt the industry.
I often struggle to think of something decent from Google. May be when Gmail was spam free and Google Search was fast and accurate. But those didn't last long. If there is one thing I could commend Google, it would be their Datacenter infrastructure and Subsea Cable investment.
A branch from the cable to the island is relatively cheap. And although the population of the island is only around 5000, the human return on this investment is huge.
In simple economic terms it allows Saints (as they are known) to participate in the global digital economy. Both as providers (everything from programmers to call centres) to consumers (basic things like voice,meetings,streaming etc.)
St Helena now has an airport so with connectivity, tourism also improves. Its a lot easier to take a week to visit a truly exotic location if connectivity is also good.
Currently the islands share a small satillite connection, which is very expensive, and very slow.
In summary, the provision of good connectivity in rural areas helps stem the flood to ever larger urban areas, and allows remote communities to both preserve themselves but also participate directly in a global economy.
"In Brussels the following year, SHG UK Representative, Kedell Worboys, along with Director for Latin America & Caribbean, Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, Jolita Butkeviciene, signed a Financing Agreement for the Territorial Allocation of the 11th European Development Fund (EDF 11). As a result, €21.5 million was allocated to St Helena to support the delivery of the SHG Digital Strategy through the realisation of the submarine cable to enable faster and more reliable internet connectivity on the Island.[154]"
[+] [-] dexwiz|3 years ago|reply
https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/05/google-picks-south-africa-...
[+] [-] matharmin|3 years ago|reply
That is not quite the same things as the dedicated connections that AWS/Google would want between their data centres, but it's not the same connectivity issues we struggled with 15 years ago when we only had one or two subsea cables.
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=teraco+ac...
[+] [-] googlryas|3 years ago|reply
It's very confusing to me. South Africa is really far out of the way. I guess a 2000 mile round trip from Lagos isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, and maybe Kenyans have better connectivity with a data center in the ME or India.
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
It is quite far though - around 100ms latency to Europe which no cable can fix unfortunately
[+] [-] epivosism|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_Island aka
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[+] [-] _visgean|3 years ago|reply
> The Investment Package will facilitate projects in submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cables, as well as cloud and data infrastructures. It will also support regulatory frameworks promoting a digital transition that put people at the centre and the principles of trusted connectivity, such as data protection.
> According to a brief (and somewhat detail-thin) explainer that the EU put out, the Global Gateway Investment Package will focus on infrastructure that can facilitate trade and mobility. Also included is a EurAfrica Gateway Cable – an under-sea fibre optic network that will connect sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with Europe. Another focus is electrification – 600m Africans still lack access to electricity. https://www.ntu.edu.sg/cas/news-events/news/details/europe-p...
we are building cables. But also eletricity.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|3 years ago|reply
According to a source I'll never find again, Africa is on a European year 1900 economic development level, and catches up 3-4 years per year.
I don't think Africa needs European charity. They'll develop themselves from now on.
[+] [-] rpadovani|3 years ago|reply
- https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/brazil-africa/s... - https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/euro-africa/equ...
[+] [-] aantix|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_communications_c...
>This advantage only increases over time, as tighter cables provide higher bandwidth – the 2012 generation of cables drop
>the transatlantic latency to under 60 milliseconds, according to Hibernia Atlantic, deploying such a cable that year.[
Are they able to achieve a direct, straight-line path between the two endpoints over thousands of miles?
[+] [-] XorNot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|3 years ago|reply
Mother Earth Mother Board
The hacker tourist ventures forth across the wide and wondrous meatspace of three continents, chronicling the laying of the longest wire on Earth.
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Earth_Mother_Board
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8242682
[+] [-] fetzu|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] skybrian|3 years ago|reply
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/07/africa/google-equiano-subsea-...
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[+] [-] DisjointedHunt|3 years ago|reply
Free unlimited egress would completely change cloud economics.
It's going to happen anyway, either wait to be disrupted by the likes of Cloudflare or do it now and disrupt the industry.
[+] [-] kedihacker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TedDoesntTalk|3 years ago|reply
Why? How can that possibly be profitable?
[+] [-] bruce511|3 years ago|reply
In simple economic terms it allows Saints (as they are known) to participate in the global digital economy. Both as providers (everything from programmers to call centres) to consumers (basic things like voice,meetings,streaming etc.)
St Helena now has an airport so with connectivity, tourism also improves. Its a lot easier to take a week to visit a truly exotic location if connectivity is also good.
Currently the islands share a small satillite connection, which is very expensive, and very slow.
In summary, the provision of good connectivity in rural areas helps stem the flood to ever larger urban areas, and allows remote communities to both preserve themselves but also participate directly in a global economy.
[+] [-] kcb|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Helena#Telecommunication...
[+] [-] cloudmatthevv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] EGreg|3 years ago|reply