No US in BRICS
Fiber tug-of-war
BRICS is a new fiber optic network being laid over land/under sea. The U.S.? Not left out, but late to get connected, and not included in the naming acronym.
BRICS fiber optic cable is a project to connect Russia through southeast Asia including India, on to South Africa over to Brazil with a waiting-to-be installed connection to Miami on the dead end link.
BRICS, an association of the five major emerging national economies (Brazil, Russia,India, China and South Africa), is deploying BRICS cable, a two-fiber pair running 34,000 kilometers in total, which will carry data at 12.8 Tbs. That's not tablespoons full but rather trillion bits per second. BRICS countries cover about 45% of the world's population and about 25% of the world's gross domestic product. And that GDP is fast-growing.
Throughout its entire evolution the Internet has effectively been governed by the U.S. but, fact is, times are a-changing. Much of world believes the U.S. naughty-no-fair in the NSA-style data gathering/eaves dropping. This is especially true of nations that are not on good terms with us. We eavesdrop on the transmissions of other sovereignties—a fact—and some cry foul, "a breach of international law". And of course, for various other reasons involved in the growth of and use of internet, other nations are bound to begin eyeing the need to govern their own internet use. Such is life.
We're not even included in the new network's name, "BRICS". Perhaps we could be included, say, BRUICS (sounds like Buicks) or UBRICS, BURICS, BRICUS. No? Please? Pretty Please?
This situation, again, is a sign of the times. We may now live in the Golden Age of the internet where the world can openly communicate 24 by 7 with language barriers being the only thing slowing us down. But politicians may manage an end to that by listening to the interests of big business trying to capture low-hanging profits and governing bodies angering other governing bodies. That end to the current status of an open world-wide network is certainly a sad state of affairs. As is the plight of humanity on Planet Earth, we have to keep fighting for freedom, yes, even with internet use.
Let's hope that the BRICS gang will allow free sharing of their tbps with our bbps and mbps. Put all together that spells tbpsbbpsmbps. You pronounce that by sticking your tongue out between your two lips, applying pressure and blowing. Please turn your head to the side.
10/17/2013
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