Simon Butcher

In Australia, submarine cables are so vitally important for communications that the first submarine cable linking our little island to the rest of the world landed in 1902. If you're serious about the Internet industry in Australia, you would generally know the major data cables connecting the continent to the world.

In fact, anyone using the Internet actively in Australia around the year 2000 would have at least felt the difference when the Southern Cross Cable came on-line.

People seem a little confused as to why PIPE would be building a cable to Guam though. What's in Guam that makes it so interesting?

Fundamentally, Guam is quickly building itself into a little international communications hub, of sorts. Does anyone remember an episode of SeaQuest called “Photon Bullet”, where Lucas visits his friends in one of the world's major underwater fibre optic communications hubs? Okay, probably not — not many people seem to have seen that show.

The episode revolved around an underwater communications hub, linking many high speed submarine fibre optic cables together as a sort of Internet exchange.

I personally see Guam potentially facilitating this in the future. That is, Guam becoming a major international Internet exchange point for the Pacific region, minus the underwater part (unless global warming raises sea levels by some 400 metres).

With so much blogging malarky going on out there these days, at least go check out PIPE's PPC-1 blog; it's just getting started!