qerttastic.blogg.se

And since Edward Snowden’s revelations, we know that Washington and its allies do not hesitate to intercept communications that transit through these cables on a massive scale. This concern is all the more acute since most of these actors come from the United States. “ Given the predominance of private actors, could we end up with a form of monopoly of the GAFAMs on submarine cables? They have significant financial resources to shape the Internet“, said Camille Morel, a researcher at the Lyon Center for International Security and Defense Studies (CLESID), during the same inCyber meeting. GAFAM’s intense lobbying of governments and organizations such as the European Union to influence legislation governing digital technology is based on this particular strength. This is a great challenge to their independence, because these actors control more and more networks and content, without governments – and local companies – having any say in the matter. We would like to believe in it, but this project places the connected countries in a situation of dependence on private actors. If AWS (Amazon Web Services) pulls cables between its data centers on both sides of the Atlantic, isn’t it to maximize its traffic at the expense of its competitors? Nevertheless, Meta assures that all African countries served by 2Africa will benefit from neutral data centers at their landing points, not belonging to a sole operator. A stranglehold of the Web giants that could well undermine the so-called Net neutrality, a principle that ensures that data from all Web players are treated equally. “Soon, 95% of transatlantic communication capacity will be controlled by the GAFAMs”, said Jean-Luc Vuillemin.ĢAfrica is the result of collaboration between China Mobile International, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC. Since 2010, Google has invested in 15 undersea cables, five of which it owns exclusively.

Whether alone or in consortia, they are constantly building cables under all oceans. This renewed interest has been triggered by the rapidly evolving submarine cable market: once the exclusive preserve of telecom operators and sometimes governments, it is now being boosted by the GAFAMs, which are increasingly hungry for bandwidth. After much procrastination (ASN was for sale for years and underwent several social plans), Nokia decided in 2021 to inject 360 million euros over three years into its subsidiary. While the company remains based in the Hexagon -more precisely, in Calais-, it is no longer France that has control over this strategic tool of national independence. Great news? Not quite, as this nugget fell into Nokia’s lap in 2015, when Alcatel was controversially sold to the Finnish corporate giant. This is a major achievement by the French company ASN (Alcatel Submarine Networks), one of the four leading players in this market, alongside the American company SubCom, the Japanese company NEC and the Chinese company Huawei Marine.

First of all, it represents an industrial challenge: once completed in 2024, its 45,000 kilometers of fiber optics will interconnect 33 countries, from Africa to Europe, including the Middle East and India.

Yet there is nothing impressive about fiber optic cables: “Physically, a submarine cable is just like a garden hose”, reminded Jean-Luc Vuillemin, Executive Vice President of Orange International Networks, Infrastructures & Services, at the inCyber breakfast on January 27, 2021, dedicated to the “submarine cable war”.ĢAfrica alone illustrates most of the challenges associated with this strategic activity. In this case, the 448 undersea cables, totaling 1.3 million kilometers (32 times the circumference of the Earth), provide 99% of intercontinental Internet connections. And, if 2Africa is the sixteenth cable to “land” in Marseille, it is also because the city is home to numerous data centers, allowing traffic to be optimized.įor the public often forgets: our WhatsApp calls, our Netflix series, our video conferences on Teams or our collaborative work with a team of Indian developers, so-called “immaterial” activities, would not be possible without a solid material base. And it’s no coincidence: at the crossroads of the undersea information highways to Africa, the Middle East and Asia, it is also connected to major European cities. On November 8, the city of Marseille was connected to 2Africa, the world’s future longest data cable. Marseille, once a hub for Mediterranean trade, is now on its way to becoming the fifth largest Internet hub in the world. Geography does not lie, even for an apparently dematerialized activity like the Web: from caravels to fiber optics, technologies evolve, but maritime routes remain.