The dependence on digital and its infrastructures is increasing every day. To ensure their independence, the majors of the sector therefore invest in the network (Internet). Sophy Caulier reveals, in an article in Le Monde Économie on June 24, the battle that is being played out between the various players on this gigantic network.

Composed of three main elements: data centres, networks and interconnection points, the Internet is indeed a physical network. The cumulative length of the submarine cables is thirty times around the Earth, or 1.2 million kilometres. However, even though this infrastructure was built to be resilient, it is on the verge of overdose. For information, Netflix occupied one third of the bandwidth in the United States during peak hours in 2016. Another example: in 2018, companies are increasingly storing their data on the cloud with more than 20% growth for the French market. But the risk of overloading the network does not really worry.

The main threat is actually the breakage of submarine or land cables that can cause an Internet outage for several days. This was the case at the beginning of the year in about ten countries on the west coast of Africa. The infrastructure therefore remains fragile despite the redundancy of cables. Companies like OVH, InterCloud or Colt choose to build their own network to protect themselves but also to reduce costs and guarantee quality services to their customers.

GAFAM, which has had data centres for a long time, is also investing heavily in cables. "They deploy their own cables to interconnect their data centers on all continents without going through telecom operators. The challenge for these actors is to set the costs. In other words, they'd rather own than rent! "says Jean-Luc Lemmens, director of Idate DigiWorld's Media-Telecom division.

But when it comes to developing countries or certain geographical areas too far from cables, Internet giants deploy networks via satellites, UAVs or balloons. Amazon, Facebook, Virgin or SoftBank also have great satellite ambitions. Nothing seems to be able to stop the almighty GAFAM in their race to control the armature of the Net.

Click here to read an extract of the article (full article if you subscribe to Le Monde).


Source: Le Monde Économie