Latest news with #Telegeography
Economic Times
7 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Tata Communications announces TGN-IA2 subsea cable linking Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan to enhance connectivity
TIL Creatives Representative Image Tata Communications, on Tuesday, announced the TGN-IA2 subsea cable system to enhance connectivity for businesses across Asia. The cable connects Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and complements the existing TGN-IA cable system by offering interconnections to other regions. The system is constructed by the Asia Direct Cable (ADC) consortium, of which, half-a-fibre pair is fully operated and managed by Tata Communications. This allows the company to independently manage capacity upgrades and make faster provisioning for customers. The ADC is a global consortium of leading communications and technology companies, including NT (Thailand), China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT Inc., Singtel, SoftBank Corp., Tata Communications and multi-terabits capacity TGN-IA2 cable is expected to significantly enhance data transfer capabilities and offer diverse, scalable bandwidth solutions to hyperscalers, multinational corporations, and telecom Communications operates multiple terabytes of capacities across its 500,000+ km round-the-globe subsea optical fibre network. This includes TGN-TIC, TGN-EA (Eurasia), TGN-Gulf, TGN-P (Pacific), TGN-A (Atlantic) and others. The Asia-Pacific region, particularly Southeast Asia, is now a global data transmission hub, with growing subsea investments from companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. The region is witnessing a rapid build-out of hyperscale data centres, and submarine cables are critical to ensuring low-latency, high-throughput links between these to Telegeography, the global demand for international bandwidth is growing at over 30% annually, and Asia accounts for a significant share of this surge. Countries like India, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines are now key landing points for such cables, facilitating digital trade and cloud infrastructure has recently seen large commitments in this space. For instance, Google is set to commission its Blue-Raman submarine cable system in Mumbai this year. Last month, Meta announced the 'Waterworth' project—the world's longest subsea cable connecting five continents with landings in India. Japan's NTT Data is also set to commission MIST - its first submarine cable system connecting Malaysia, India, Singapore and Thailand, entailing a total investment of $400 million. Meanwhile, telecom operator Bharti Airtel has landed SEA-ME-WE-6 and 2Africa Pearls cables on Indian shores this year. Reliance Jio is also set to commission the India-Asia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX) submarine cable systems, expanding the country's existing capacity significantly.
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Hard wired
The magic of wireless living is all smoke and mirrors. We may imagine our phone calls and text messages soaring into orbit to ping off the kind of satellites we see in the movies, but 99 percent of digital information travels within an earthbound and tactile system. This global network of cables spanning the oceans and intersecting at key junctures around the world forms a massive foundation of metal, plastic, rubber and optical fiber, all built the old-fashioned way. No wonder it makes news when an undersea cable gets broken or even sabotaged. Here's the breakdown. The first transatlantic telegram from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan in 1858 slashed the wait by 95 percent compared to a letter sent via steamliner. That first transoceanic cable — 1,500 tons of copper wrapped in latex, 1,910 miles long — was laid along the seabed from Newfoundland to Ireland, vastly outdoing its humble predecessors across New York Harbor and the British Channel. Some called it 'the eighth wonder of the world.' Today, data travels at roughly two-thirds the speed of light along the fiber optics that form the core of our modern cables, wrapped in layers of copper, woven steel and polyethylene. Each cable is only about as thick as a garden hose. These 'information superhighways' are buried at the shoreline for security, but lay freely on the ocean floor for most of their reach, sufficiently armored against nature's worst. Most of the time! Russia and China are prime suspects in recent sabotage attacks on cables in the Baltic Sea and Taiwanese waters, but accidents and natural causes break two to four cables each week. Data is quickly rerouted in most cases, causing little more than a simple refresh for end users. That was not the case off the coast of Africa in 2022, when a cable sabotage near Egypt cut off connectivity for 90 percent of Ethiopia. If the world's undersea cable systems were to suddenly disappear, only a miniscule amount of this traffic would be backed up by satellite, and the internet would effectively be split between continents.' — Nicole Starosielski, UC Berkeley professor and author of 'The Undersea Network' That's how far the 565 existing submarine cables would reach, stretched end to end: 919,629 miles. Almost four trips to the moon. Eighty-three more cable projects are planned or under construction, per Telegeography, including Meta's own $10 billion project, nicknamed the 'W' for the pattern it will form to link continents along its 31,068-mile journey. Nearly all are privately owned by consortiums of telecom companies, but Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon are also getting in the game. The Polynesian nation was digitally isolated for more than a month after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted under the Pacific Ocean three years ago. A team of 57 people had to install over 56 miles of new undersea cable to get Tonga's internet back online. It's one of 25 islands and countries that still depend on a solitary undersea connection, along with the Marshall Islands, Cook Islands, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. That's how many still lack any mainline cable connections. About 40 percent of the global population still has no internet access, according to research by Edward John Oughton, a geography professor at George Mason University. It would cost nearly half a trillion dollars to connect parts of China, India, Indonesia, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with $133 billion for cables and towers alone. Roughly 63 percent of the 11,180 active satellites in orbit belong to Starlink, the global internet provider owned by SpaceX and Elon Musk. The company's high profile in geopolitics has reshaped how people picture internet infrastructure. But its satellites are more like impermanent access points for the transoceanic information highway — 120 fell out of the sky this January, and it wasn't the first time. This story appears in the April 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.
