Beyond the first mile: where your Internet comes from

Today’s post is written by Rudolf Van der Berg of the OECD’s Science, Technology and Industry Directorate.
In 2012 the only submarine fibre optic cable that then connected Benin with global telecommunication networks and the Internet was cut for two weeks. International payments were not possible and the equivalent of 150,000 weekly salaries were not available in a country of 10 million people. The influence was particularly severe because most servers are located outside the country due to a lack of data centres and local-hosting facilities. Though similar cable cuts happen on average twice a week, their effects are generally less. This is due to the fact that most countries are connected to multiple submarine fibre-cables, connect overland to neighbouring countries, and have domestic data centres. More...