Gafam gets their hands on submarine cables to better control the internet

Gafam gets their hands on submarine cables to better control the internet

When you read an email, watch a video, post a photo on a social network, make an online purchase, consult a search engine, in short, by simply using the Internet, information is sure to pass or passed anywhere in the time specified by Undersea fiber optic cable. These streaks that abound on the bottom of oceans and seas—the TeleGeography website, the sector’s bible, has 486 of them—transmit 99% of the world’s digital data. There’s also a good chance that the cable is owned by Alphabet (Google, YouTube…), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp…) and, to a lesser extent, Amazon and Microsoft. On the other hand, Apple prefers to rely on specialized operators, but its friends from Gafam, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, have managed in less than ten years to get their hands on a sector hitherto dominated by large international operators. Telecommunications.

Since Unity, the first transoceanic cable it took, in 2011, Alphabet has built or planned another twenty lines, five more than Meta. French group Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the leading European manufacturer of submarine fiber optic cables, estimates that 70% of current global projects, mainly across the Pacific and across the Atlantic, are supported by Google, Facebook and Co. On the Atlantic Ocean, it is impossible today to build a cable without Gafam.confirms Jean-Luc Vuillemin, director of the entity that manages all the international networks of the Orange operator, and himself the owner of the submarine lines.

Internet stars quietly entered the sector at the dawn of the 2000s, often as minority investors along with telcos, with a desire to explore the underwater world. But in 2018, Google (which became a subsidiary of Alphabet in 2015) no longer wants to be just a traveler. The group has launched three projects of its own, including Curie, a tribute to Marie Curie, a telegram linking California to Chile. He brags about becoming like this “First major non-telecom company to build a transcontinental cable”. Meta, which was still called Facebook, is following suit.

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Concerned about the proper transmission of their data to the end user, these two Internet giants want to control their infrastructure. Since 2012, Google has also rolled out fiber optics to people in several cities in the United States, thus directly competing with cable and telecom operators. Facebook worked on its drone internet connectivity solution, Aquila, before abandoning it in 2018. They are now focusing their forces on undersea cables.

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About the Author: Irene Alves

"Bacon ninja. Guru do álcool. Explorador orgulhoso. Ávido entusiasta da cultura pop."

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