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back to article Submarine cable capacity doubled with flick of switch

With a flick of a switch, NTT has boosted the capacity on its Japan-US PC-1 cable link more than 2.5 times to 8.4 terabits per second. The company's announcement heralds the beginning of a rollout that will ultimately take in NTT's intra-Asian submarine cables. NTT has been trialling 100 Gbps digital coherent optical systems …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And not a moment too soon. Do you have any idea how long it takes to slurp every bit of data on everyone over that old slow link? FFS, there are tear-wrists out there just plotting to destroy the Constitution of the United States.

    -- Gen. Alexander, NSA Director

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      No worries Gen. Alexander, I think the NSA is destroying the Constitution just fine without any help

      5 1
      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Unhappy

        AC:08:23

        But sometimes in order to defend the constitution you have to accept casualties.

        Like the constitution itself for example.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      You can't make an omelette without breaking the constitution.

      --GWB

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      1. IGnatius T Foobar
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Marxists FAIL

        "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." -- Hillary Clinton

        Not only wealth but privacy too. Thanks to people like Clinton and Obama we have no privacy left in the United States. One of the problems with big government is that it has to get ever bigger and ever more paranoid in order to sustain and embiggen itself. Part of that paranoia involves destroying privacy.

        Snowden is nothing short of a hero. Anyone with a brain already knew that the government was snooping on everyone and everything without a warrant; he simply blew their cover.

        So what does this have to do with a discussion of submarine cables? Absolutely nothing. Governments don't tap into submarine cables. They simply colocate equipment at the endpoints to extract the data they want.

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        1. Antonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Big Brother

          Re: Marxists FAIL

          >Governments don't tap into submarine cables.

          The ones that *don't* enter their territory they do.

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        2. Jame_s
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          Facepalm

          Re: Marxists FAIL

          If you think your privacy will improve by changing the flavour of your government to one you prefer, you are a fool.

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        3. ecofeco Silver badge
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          WTF?

          Re: Marxists FAIL

          >Governments don't tap into submarine cables.

          The top Navies of the world do this everyday. Google it.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Constitution?

      -- Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney

      PS Sorry I'm late. I was down in the basement playing with Osama.

      1 1
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh No!

    Asians are already dominating mmorpg gaming in the US. Higher speeds could only make it worse.

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    1. Daniel B.
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      Happy

      Re: Oh No!

      With those phat pipes, practically all Asians are going to be LPBs!

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    where's my data gone?

    that 250gb hard drive - 15 seconds and its gone.......

    1 0
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meanwhile in the UK

    2Mb broadband will be 3 years late due to BT

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    1. phear46
      Reply Icon

      Re: Meanwhile in the UK

      give it 3 centurys and bt might get this stuff to the cabinet.....

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meanwhile in the UK

      Quit ya bitching, its like a stuck record.

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  5. Daniel B.
    Boffin

    So slow

    Anyone remember the talk back in 2000-2001 about how the backbone networks & stuff had overbuilt and that we couldn't possibly use up all that bandwidth? All that dark fiber from telcos because it didn't have any use? I remember mentioning that the only reason they didn't really get used was because most of us were still stuck with dialup. And it seems I was proven right; as soon as broadband went ubiquitous, now all those "overcapacity" broadband stuff went saturated. And even now, I'm not sure if that dark fiber has been lit up, or if it remains dead in the water.

    With these upgrades, we should be able to crank up backbone bandwidth worldwide, and telcos should stop trying to ram data caps against us...

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    1. Bob H
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      Coffee/keyboard

      Re: So slow

      I worked for an Asian company in Europe until recently and I must say the connectivity from Europe to Asia sucks the big one. I struggled to get a consistent 3Mbit/sec to Korea at any time of the day. This kind of news is probably quite good for companies like my former employer.

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  6. Kevin Pollock

    Alcatel trial wasn't on a submarine cable...

    ...it was in a lab.

    The reason is that this test was made with a new kind of optical fibre called "large effective area fibre". BTW - this is not the same as LEAF (where the "A" stands for "Aperture"). Here is an example for this new type of fibre,

    http://www.corning.com/opticalfiber/news_and_events/news_releases/2010/2010051101.aspx

    The key point is that this is not the fiber that is already under our oceans, so the Alcatel test isn't indicative of the kind of bandwidth boost that can be achieved in real submarine networks (which the headline suggested). Nevertheless it's an amazing achievement and points the way for the next generation of submarine cables.

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