Breaking the internet

During our conversation about Emerging Issues Analysis in class yesterday, I asked if anyone could think of issues that *seemed* to be emerging a few years ago, but then didn't wind up having the expected impact. Someone then raised the question of whatever happened to fibre-optic cable after all the buzz around it. Coincidentally, this article appeared at tech/culture website Wired on the same day:

"Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts Likely"
by Ryan Singel, Threat Level (a Wired Blog), 31 January 02007
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/01/fiber-optic-cab.html

Large swaths of the Middle East and Southeast Asia fell into internet darkness after two major underseas fiber optic links were damaged off Egypt's coast on Wednesday.
[...]
Telecoms in Egypt, India, Pakistan and Kuwait (among others) are scrambling to find other arrangements to carry their internet and long distance phone traffic.

Moving on to the next question that was asked, about why wireless doesn't simply replace this kind of cable, take a look at this picture:



It shows how ultra high-bandwidth, long-distance data delivery happens via "intercontinental fiber" while wireless spectrum is used to deliver locally to the user, what they call in the industry the "Last Mile".

Like I said, fibre-optic cables didn't go away, they just went underground. :)