Putting cables under an area used for an anchorage ( can you say Suez Canal? ) might be a bad idea.
Cuts are between Sicily and Tunisia. This is a really big one btw. The most recent report I got says:
- - Saudi Arabia: 55% out of service
- - Djibouti: 71% out of service
- - Egypt: 52% out of service
- - United Arab Emirates: 68% out of service
- - India: 82% out of service
- - Lebanon: 16% out of service
- - Malaysia: 42% out of service
- - Maldives: 100% out of service
- - Pakistan: 51% out of service
- - Qatar: 73% out of service
- - Syria: 36% out of service
- - Taiwan: 39% out of service
- - Yemen: 38% out of service
- - Zambia: 62% out of service
This was a useful map last time there was damage near Alexandria.
Putting cables under an area used for an anchorage ( can you say Suez Canal? ) might be a bad idea.
Perhaps, but the questions "What is the shortest and most convenient route for an undersea cable?' and "What is the shortest and most convenient sea lane?" tend to have very similar answers. Alternately, the problems inherent in routing cables over land in North Africa and the Middle East are obvious.
Does this have something to do with libertarian politics?
What am I missing?
Which conveniently explains why the software development team I work with [somewhere in India] have been complaining bitterly all day about terrible performance issues on our development servers which are located [somewhere else]
This is a general purpose internet magazine, not a narrowly defined politics blog. You'll find everything from rants about the management of Chelsea F.C. to thoughts on modern art, space settlement, weapons system development... pretty much anything you will find in a general newspaper.
We happen to approach life from a mostly libertarian angle, so that will usually come through. But life is not ideology and ideology is not life.
Michael J:
the questions "What is the shortest and most convenient route for an undersea cable?' and "What is the shortest and most convenient sea lane?" tend to have very similar answers.
There are at least a couple of initiatives to build new cables in the Mediterranean ... The new cables however seem designed only for increased capacity rather than for redundancy, as they appear to follow the same geographic route as the current cables ... If that is the case, the new cables will likely be susceptible to the same problems as the current ones. ... It is possible that building new cables to follow a different geographic route is either impractical or too expensive. The geography is what it is and there is not much one can do about that.
Let's see now: a staple of the world communication network, the second-most technologically advanced one, and the one farthest from "compelling" national and legal authority, mysteriously disrupted only to a certain key area, all of whose state agents are heavily involved in surreptitious schemes, and at a time when democaratically elected states are in conflict with authoritarian ones, brigands abound, during a religiously-based world upheaval (what have I missed?)--I think one could put a "libertarian politics" slant on that. I think Heinlein could write a novel about it, were it not on Earth. Let's all apply ourselves, shall we? Someone needs it spelled out.
These kinds of outages are costly and damaging economically but they are not uncommon. There was an even worse one last year caused from the other direction when a minor quake off Taiwan caused an underwater landslide that took out a bunch of cables. I could also point out that the Mediterranean area in question very likely is right on the tectonic plate boundary. I don't need any conspiracy to explain it. Could make a good story plot though, but it would have to be much bigger and last a lot longer.
There are major outages on land all the time as well. I'd say I see a report of one every week or two in the US. I'm sure you are all aware that Backhoe's are cable seeking devices. Doesn't matter where the cable is,a backhoe will find it. There's an old network biz joke along those lines which I've heard many times... I'll leave it to someone else to tell it.
I'm guessing, and can't be bothered searching, but it seems pretty likely the Sicily>Malta dogleg route is chosen because it's very shallow (used to be a land bridge before sea levels rose). You're then happily on the African side of the tectonic divide, and can continue eastwards in geologically stable areas (at least compared to the other side of the Med). For redundancy you'd need to build a more expensive, deepwater route, and who's going to be the one to volunteer to do that?
