Three of Google’s deliberate submarine cables are on indefinite maintain whereas Team Telecom investigates
Team Telecom, a shadowy US nationwide safety unit tasked with defending America’s telecommunications techniques, is delaying plans by Google, Facebook and different tech firms for the subsequent era of worldwide fiber optic cables.
Team Telecom is comprised of representatives from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice (together with the FBI), who assess overseas investments in American telecom infrastructure, with a give attention to cybersecurity and surveillance vulnerabilities.
Team Telecom works at a notoriously sluggish tempo, taking up seven years to resolve that letting China Mobile function within the US would “raise substantial and serious national security and law enforcement risks,” for example. And whereas Team Telecom is working, purposes are stalled on the FCC.
The on-going delays to submarine cable tasks, which may price practically half a billion {dollars} every, include important monetary impacts. They additionally cede benefit to connectivity tasks that haven’t attracted Team Telecom’s consideration – such because the nascent web satellite tv for pc mega-constellations from SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon .
Team Telecom’s investigations have lengthy been a supply of rigidity inside Silicon Valley. Google’s subsidiary GU Holdings Inc has been constructing a community of worldwide submarine fiber-optic cables for over a decade. Every cable that lands on US soil is topic to Team Telecom evaluation, and every one has confronted delays and restrictions.
