[05:07:55] that's an interesting business model [09:50:03] lol [15:22:59] * greg-g waves [15:23:15] 👋 [15:23:31] I heard via Grant the discussion of underwater cables, and then checked my RSS feeds and saw the latest from FB: https://engineering.fb.com/connectivity/2africa/ [15:23:51] (he's in the CTO<->Perf team right now with us) [15:23:55] oh nice [15:26:22] that one isn't yet on https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ but the interconnect point in France does look like Marseilles (or maybe nearby in Toulon or La Seyne?) [15:26:33] * greg-g nods [15:26:46] * greg-g hasn't read the article yet, listening to Timo talk metrics [15:26:46] that's cool! [15:28:31] https://www.2africacable.com not much more data [15:29:05] yeah and I've only seen the same picture there and in news articles [15:29:32] The 2Africa parties and Airtel have signed an agreement with Telecom Egypt to provide a completely new crossing linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean [15:30:24] make me think of boats needing permission to cross the canal [15:33:29] greg-g: that's just facebook being better at PR than the average telco [15:33:48] paravoid: heh, fair enough [15:35:00] the ratio of PR buzzwords to the actual feat accomplished here is staggering [15:35:07] don't get me wrong, it's a good development [15:35:24] submarine cables always are, and especially ones in traditionally underserved routes [15:36:12] it's also worth noting that Google and Facebook (and I think MSFT?) have funded many new cables in recent years, and collectively own a lot of that bandwidth [15:38:37] submarine cables are typically built by consortia of dozens of companies [15:39:08] and yes it is a shift that the big content providers have started contributing to these [15:39:22] compared to only state telcos, or ex-incumbents etc. [15:39:48] what I meant about the above is [15:39:53] "China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC announced today that they will partner to build 2Africa" [15:40:02] headline in another site: [15:40:03] "Facebook to build 37,000km 2Africa subsea cable" [15:40:56] facebook's blog post doesn't even mention its partners [15:42:40] techcrunch: "Facebook, telcos to build huge subsea cable for Africa and Middle East" [15:46:04] btw, this one is behind a login, but have some of the land fibers: https://www.infrapedia.com/app [15:46:18] can use fake email [15:48:57] why would you use a fake email? [15:49:28] if someone doesn't want to leave their real email [15:49:44] to avoid marketing, etc. [15:59:16] uninformed by-stander question: why are there no records on that infrapedia page for Asia? N./S. America + Europe + Africa have them... [16:02:32] my guess is local providers not disclosing it [16:35:08] * greg-g nods