Strong winds and choppy seas have delayed the deployment of a new subsea fibre cable running under the English Channel connecting data centres in France and the UK.
The cable – called CrossChannel Fibre – is due to link Equinix data centres in London and Paris via Brighton on the South Coast of England and Veules-les-Roses near Dieppe.
Work was due to start this week, but the arrival of autumn storms has meant that cable laying has been put on hold until calmer weather is forecast.
Once complete, the CrossChannel Fibre will be the first subsea fibre-optic project laid across the English Channel in nearly 20 years. Built by Crosslake Fibre and terminating in Equinix data centres, the 520km cable should be capable of delivering over 20 terabits per fibre pair, of which there are 96.
Those behind the project claim it will provide the lowest latency fibre network between the capital cities of England and France. It is due to be ready for service later this year.
A spokesperson for Crosslake Fibre, which is working with Equinix on the project, said: "We are running one, two days behind at the moment due to weather as some of the work is weather sensitive. [This is] nothing out of the ordinary for offshore work, [and] any halts are temporary in nature."
They added: "None of the subsea cable has been laid. The shore-end landing work is weather-sensitive as we need vessels that can essentially beach themselves, so we are awaiting a window to do so in Brighton."
The work was scheduled to begin on Monday and, weather permitting, should take around three weeks to complete.
In other cable news, the 2Africa consortium – which includes the likes of China Mobile International, Facebook, Orange, Telecom Egypt, and Vodafone – has successfully added another leg of its subsea cable called 2Africa PEARLS, which connects Africa, Europe, and Asia.
Unhindered by fast-moving weather systems sweeping in from across the Atlantic, the 2Africa consortium extended its reach to the Arabian Gulf, India, and Pakistan, it confirmed today.
It brings the total length of the 2Africa cable system to more than 45,000km, making it the "longest subsea cable system ever deployed."
Kevin Salvadori, VP of networking infrastructure at Facebook, one of those behind the project, explained that Africa is the "least connected continent, with only a quarter of its 1.3 billion people connected to the internet."
"The 2Africa subsea cable system will provide nearly three times the total network capacity of all the subsea cables serving Africa today," he added.
Earlier this month, Google's newest transatlantic subsea cable was finally hauled ashore in Cornwall, more than a year after the megacorp revealed plans to connect the UK and US.
The arrival of the Grace Hopper cable – named after the computer science pioneer – saw the 16-fibre pair (32 fibres) Google-funded cable successfully brought ashore near Bude on the picturesque northern coast of Cornwall. ®
Interview "It's our data, it's our intellectual property. Being able to migrate it out those systems is near impossible... It was a real frustration for us."
These were the words of communication and collaboration platform Mattermost's founder and CTO, Corey Hulen, speaking to The Register about open source, sovereignty and audio bridges.
"Some of the history of Mattermost is exactly that problem," says Hulen of the issue of closed source software. "We were using proprietary tools – we were not a collaboration platform before, we were a games company before – [and] we were extremely frustrated because we couldn't get our intellectual property out of those systems..."
Government departments are guilty of high levels of non-compliance with the UK's off-payroll tax regime, according to a report by MPs.
Difficulties meeting the IR35 rules, which apply to many IT contractors, in central government reflect poor implementation by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and other government bodies, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.
"Central government is spending hundreds of millions of pounds to cover tax owed for individuals wrongly assessed as self-employed. Government departments and agencies owed, or expected to owe, HMRC £263 million in 2020–21 due to incorrect administration of the rules," the report said.
Internet interruption-watcher NetBlocks has reported internet outages across Pakistan on Wednesday, perhaps timed to coincide with large public protests over the ousting of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The watchdog organisation asserted that outages started after 5:00PM and lasted for about two hours. NetBlocks referred to them as “consistent with an intentional disruption to service.”
Interpol and cops in Africa have arrested a Nigerian man suspected of running a multi-continent cybercrime ring that specialized in phishing emails targeting businesses.
His alleged operation was responsible for so-called business email compromise (BEC), a mix of fraud and social engineering in which staff at targeted companies are hoodwinked into, for example, wiring funds to scammers or sending out sensitive information. This can be done by sending messages that impersonate executives or suppliers, with instructions on where to send payments or data, sometimes by breaking into an employee's work email account to do so.
The 37-year-old's detention is part of a year-long, counter-BEC initiative code-named Operation Delilah that involved international law enforcement, and started with intelligence from cybersecurity companies Group-IB, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, and Trend Micro.
Comment Broadcom’s mooted acquisition of VMware looks odd at face value, but if considered as a means to make edge computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) more mature and manageable, and give organizations the tools to drive them, the deal makes rather more sense.
Edge and IoT are the two coming things in computing and will grow for years, meaning the proposed deal could be very good for VMware’s current customers.
An Ethernet switch that Broadcom launched this week shows why this is a plausible scenario.
Emails between leading pro-Brexit figures in the UK have seemingly been stolen and leaked online by what could be a Kremlin cyberespionage team.
The messages feature conversations between former spymaster Richard Dearlove, who led Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 from 1999 to 2004; Baroness Gisela Stuart, a member of the House of Lords; and Robert Tombs, an expert of French history at the University of Cambridge, as well as other Brexit supporters. The emails were uploaded to a .co.uk website titled "Very English Coop d'Etat," Reuters first reported this week.
Dearlove confirmed his ProtonMail account was compromised. "I am well aware of a Russian operation against a Proton account which contained emails to and from me," he said. The Register has asked Baroness Stuart and Tombs as well as ProtonMail for comment. Tombs declined to comment.
The UK’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has commenced a full national security assessment of Newport Wafer Fab’s acquisition by China-controlled entity Nexperia.
The Fab is the UK’s largest chipmaking facility and produces up to 32,000 wafers a month. In August 2021 it was acquired by a Dutch outfit named Nexperia that is controlled by Chinese company Wingtech.
Issues including global semiconductor shortages demonstrating the importance of sovereign capacity, the many credible accusations that Chinese firms practice industrial espionage, China’s desire to become self-sufficient in semiconductors, and general China-related security concerns all made the sale a hot political issue. So hot that when news of the sale emerged, UK prime minister Boris Johnson promised a national security assessment, overriding business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng who had previously said the deal wasn’t worthy of a probe.
Indian budget airline SpiceJet on Wednesday attributed delayed flights to a ransomware attack.
SpiceJet said the attack was quickly contained and rectified with flights again operating normally.
The company later was forced to clarify that its definition of “normally” meant flights delayed by ransomware had a cascading effect on its schedule, so while it whacked the ransomware passengers could still expect disruptions.
Mitsubishi Electric has admitted to widespread cheating on its internal quality control efforts.
The Japanese giant makes datacenter-scale power supply products, uninterruptible power supplies, high-end optical networking kit, plus plenty of electronics and semiconductor products – so this scandal is of concern to Reg readers. Buyers of other Mitsubishi Electric products, covering building operations, railways, and space systems, also have reason for concern.
One more thing: the company's motto is "Changes for the better." We can't make this stuff up.
Current and former Activision Blizzard staff are stepping up their organizing and pressure campaigns on execs as the video-game giant tries to close its $68.7bn acquisition by Microsoft.
Firstly, QA workers at Raven Software – a studio based in Wisconsin that develops the popular first-person shooter series Call of Duty – successfully voted to officially unionize against parent biz Activision. Secondly, a former employee appealed Activision's proposed $18 million settlement with America's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regarding claims of "sex-based discrimination" and "harassment" of female staff at the corporation.
Finally, a group of current and ex-Activision employees have formed a Worker Committee Against Sex and Gender Discrimination to try and improve the company's internal sexual harassment policies. All three events occurred this week, and show how Activision is still grappling with internal revolt as it pushes ahead for Microsoft's takeover.
Nvidia exceeded market expectations and on Wednesday reported record first-quarter fiscal 2023 revenue of $8.29 billion, an increase of 46 percent from a year ago and eight percent from the previous quarter.
Nonetheless the GPU goliath's stock slipped by more than nine percent in after-hours trading amid remarks by CFO Colette Kress regarding the business's financial outlook, and plans to slow hiring and limit expenses. Nvidia stock subsequently recovered a little, and was trading down about seven percent at time of publication.
Kress said non-GAAP operating expenses in the three months to May 1 increased 35 percent from a year ago to $1.6 billion, and were "driven by employee growth, compensation-related costs and engineering development costs."
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