Construction starts on another Asia-Europe undersea cable

Construction has begun on a 19,200km submarine cable running from Singapore to France, Singaporean telco Singtel said on Monday. The company claimed the new optical-fibre cable system, called the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6), would offer one of the lowest latencies between these regions at a …

[druck]

Many cables, one canal.

Redundancy doesn't seem like a bad idea here

Bit of a single point of failure at Suez though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

According to the embedded map, it doesn't actually go through the suez canal; it splits in two and goes over land at that point.

I don't think that the map is definitive though, so I guess we won't actually find out until another ship has an issue in that area.

[Nobby_uk]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

Of course it does, where do you think they got the digger from.

[Lars]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

It won't go in the canal as there is a lot of dredging going on, it's actually quite funny to think it would.

[Len]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

Agreed, although I doubt the cable runs through the actual canal as that would be tempting fate.

I would like to see a cable from Ireland to Japan via the northern route of Barents Sea and the Bering Strait. A sort of 'hedging your geographical bets' route.

[Korev]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

> I would like to see a cable from Ireland to Japan via the northern route of Barents Sea and the Bering Strait.

It certainly means the Russian subs wouldn't have far to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

Phase 2 and 3 of the existing Quillion system follows, more or less, that route through the Northwest Passage.

[Lars]

Re: Many cables, one canal.

Still miffed about the canal one has to assume.

[Fazal Majid]

Diverse routes are also needed

It would be a good idea to avoid Egypt and the Suez Canal altogether and route a portion overland through Oman-UAE-Saudi Arabia-Jordan-Israel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Past Oman you say? Is this base still in operation?

https://www.theregister.com/2014/06/03/revealed_beyond_top_secret_british_intelligence_middleeast_internet_spy_base/

[Furious Reg reader John]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Malaysia, Bangladesh, Maldives, Pakistan, and Djibouti are all too backwards to consider cooperation with anything Israel was also involved with. They wouldn't want to reap the benefits the system could deliver to their country if they thought a Jew might also benefit.

[Little Mouse]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

All people who make sweeping generalisations accusing others of being idiots are idiots, I reckon.

[Furious Reg reader John]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

I'm such an idiot.

https://minivannewsarchive.com/politics/foreign-minister-survives-no-confidence-motion-5027

https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/djibouti/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/17/cambridge-union-audience-laughs-anti-semitic-joke-malaysian/

https://minivannewsarchive.com/politics/anti-semitism-racism-xenophobia-and-religious-intolerance-deeply-entrenched-in-maldivian-political-discourse-dr-shaheed-56002

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/443520-malaysias-israel-obsession-must-be-addressed

https://cafedissensus.com/2019/02/24/antisemitism-in-bangladesh/

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Bangladeshi-banned-from-home-country-for-visiting-Israel-returns-to-Jewish-State-515238

https://www.state.gov/reports/2020-report-on-international-religious-freedom/maldives/

https://news.sky.com/story/imran-khans-ex-wife-hits-out-at-pakistani-politician-over-antisemitic-remark-about-her-children-12360525

https://www.facebook.com/WIONews/videos/pakistan-leaders-descend-to-anti-semitic-jibes/1224806911311727/

https://somalilandsun.com/djibouti-will-not-normalize-relations-with-israel-president-guelleh/

[Spanners]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Whether they are or not, this generalisation is, sadly, too believable.

[Psmo]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Generalisations are always wrong.

[Furious Reg reader John]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Except when they are not..

[Psmo]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

Even when they're not wrong, the inherrent closedness of the rule means that evolving situations will not be followed.

The amount of time for which generalisations are valid is vanishingly small compared to the time for which they are wrong.

[Furious Reg reader John]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

A millennium plus worth of violence isn't vanishingly small:

https://www.memri.org/tv/former-head-pakistani-intelligence-general-hamid-gul-israel-our-main-enemy-it-either-us-or-them

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/ramadan-series-khaybar-re-enforces-anti-semitic-stereotypes-319568

Paris H as an icon for me as well, because she at least understands what antisemitism is - https://www.tmz.com/2014/12/02/paris-hilton-death-threats-anti-semitic-man-jewish/ (yes, you are being given a link to TMZ - I'll let you decide if having the mighty news source of TMZ quoted back at you strengthens your position...)

[Insert sadsack pun here]

Re: Diverse routes are also needed

"It would be a good idea to avoid Egypt and the Suez Canal altogether and route a portion overland..."

Running cable underwater is preferred because you only need to get permission once in each country (instead of planning permission along the whole land route), you don't need to dig a trench the whole route (so that people don't trip over it or dig it up), and you can just fling it off the back of a boat (instead of hiring a new crew in each country).

[Pascal Monett]

Okay, I have a question

With all these multi-terabyte per second connections coming in from all over the world, what is the impact on the backend in Europe ?

100 TB here, 100TB there, pretty soon you've got petabytes of capacity at your doorstep.

Does the EU have a global backend measured in petabytes ?

[Korev]

Re: Okay, I have a question

Petabits maybe...

[Lars]

Re: Okay, I have a question

@Pascal Monett

Perhaps something here about it.

https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3827731/global-internet-capacity-up-35-in-2020

"Europe is the region with the highest regional capacity, and has also seen the largest growth from 2019 to 2020."

[Justthefacts]

Not terabytes per second?

Link below says it’s 126Tbps, aka about 16 TBps not 100 TBps

https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/systems/asia-europe-africa/smw6