Monthly Archives: February 2008

TwitterThis

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

Reuters - TwitterThis - 1 In the increasingly competitive space of groups-of-people-as-gatekeepers, Reuters has added a TwitterThis link to some of its news stories.

Twitter, for the uninitiated, allows members to post “tweets” to a public timeline or their “friends” (real or virtual). Methods of posting: text from phone, the web or a stand-alone application. Because Twitter grew out of a desire to easily post a single text message to a group of people, “tweets” are limited to 140 characters; many bloggers now use the service as a mini-blog or a way to promote “real” blog posts.

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Another Cable Cut?

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The Khaleej Times reports that there are now five Middle East undersea cable that have been cut. The first, only now reported, was the Flag Telcom FALCON cable on 23 January, one week before the latest round. (tip)

Here they are:

  • SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia (nd)
  • FLAG near the Dubai coast (1 Feb)
  • FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, Egypt (30 Jan)
  • SeaMeWe-4, near Alexandria, Egypt (30 Jan)
  • Flag FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and (23 Jan)

Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”

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Anatomy Of An Undersea Cable

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

The BBC has an excellent graphic of the undersea cables that provide telecom and internet connectivity around the world. A ship has begun repairs on one cable cut last week. No new word on whether the fourth cable was cut or simply hosed due to a power issue (the semi-official line).

The IHT reports that “[u]ndersea cables carry about 95 percent of the world’s telephone and Internet traffic.” Compared to satellite transmissions, information traveling over undersea cable costs less and travels faster.

We’re now getting confirmation that this outage — four cables, three days — is an anomaly. “Flag Telecom has never had two cables down at the same time in the region,” the IHT reports. I’m still looking for data on how often undersea cables have been cut.

Update: more (with cool maps) from Jesse Robbins at O’Reilly Radar

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FCC Approves Sale of Nationwide Spectrum to AT&T

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

From Yahoo! News: AT&T has a green light to buy 60 percent of the 12MHz spectrum, part of the 700MHz spectrum band that “carries wireless signals three to four times farther than some higher spectrum bands.” In October, the announced terms of sale were US$2.5 billion. The purchase “covers 196 million of the 303 million U.S. residents and includes 72 of the top 100 media markets in the country.” This is separate from the FCC auction in progress. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps voted no.

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Undersea Vulnerability

Posted on by Kathy E. Gill

There are now four undersea cables out-of-service in the same general area of the Middle East (outage exceptions: Israel and Iraq) — all disabled in a three-day period last week. (tip) The cable bundle is only an inch in diameter (about the size of the average adult human thumb) — a mere speck on the ocean floor. (The fibre optics need power — up to 10,000 volts DC — so a power wire is bundled with four optical cables that, combined, are about the diameter of pencil lead.) Continue reading →