The Internet is vulnerable!

You may have already read about the widespread internet outages today in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa blamed on an undersea cable cut in the Mediterranean. It may have been cut by a boat anchor. The result: in some places the Internet connection is completely gone, while in others bandwidth has been cut to levels that make many kinds of communication impractical.

Imagine your day with no access to the Internet. Don't just imagine your private Internet use - think about your bank, your shopping, your news sources, your mail delivery... business and even many social interactions would grind to a halt. Many schools, unfortunately, would go on with most of the effects felt in the office rather than the classroom.

As I've been studying bandwidth over the last few months, it's clear we need to raise our capacity and our number of alternate connection routes around the world. We can't afford to have another boat anchor cause billions of dollars in lost productivity and business.