Crest Communications Urges FCC to Reject Tyco Bid to Sell Fiber to VSNL

[Doremus]

(Please note: This is a news release from Yahoo's news pages. I hope I'm allowed to post it in this forum because it's an extremely important topic and a Google search turned up no other recent mention.)

Crest Communications Urges FCC to Reject Tyco Bid to Sell Fiber to VSNL
Friday April 1, 1:21 pm ET
- Sale of Undersea Fiber Network to Firm Partially Owned by India's Government Would be a Serious and Direct Threat to U.S. Homeland Security, Crest Says

WASHINGTON, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Citing significant homeland security concerns, Crest Communications Corp. urged the Federal Communications Commission to reject Tyco Telecommunication's application to sell its global fiber network to VSNL Telecommunications, a company owned by the Indian government and the Tata Group, India's largest civilian defense contractor.

"This sale of the last remaining global undersea cable network under U.S. ownership and control represents a direct threat to our nation's security," said Brian Roussell, Vice President for Crest Communications.

"By approving this sale, the FCC would be giving up U.S. control of this vital international communications artery, which accounts for over 85% of the total trans-Pacific submarine cable capacity. We would lose our ability to ensure safe, reliable, and secure telecommunications services that are essential to the U.S. military in a time of crisis."

In its Petition to Deny filed with the FCC late last night, Crest Communications said the proposed sale would "severely compromise the Department of Defense's net-centric warfare plans and threaten the security and integrity of military, intelligence, and other sensitive communications on the cable network."

Read the rest here:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050401/dcf052.html?.v=1


This is a huge threat to our national security, yet it's being ramrodded through with hardly a mention in the news.

Have ALL the crooks in Washington gone stark raving MAD??

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Yes.

Any other questions?

That whole town is loony and disconnected from reality, except in a very few cases.

[Massacure]

2. So what are all those expensive communications satalites doing in space???

Did we put them up there for kicks and giggles? :shrug:

[Doremus]

3. There's more at work here than simple greed.

They're willing to sell a multi-BILLION-dollar network for a paltry hundred million or so.

And throwing in our national security for kicks.

It's crazy, both from a business standpoint and military perspective.

What the hell are they doing?

"<snip>Another story that could have far-reaching and possibly very adverse implications for Indo-American relations went nearly unremarked, however -- apart from attention from CNN's Lou Dobbs and his intrepid investigative staff: The impending transfer, at fire-sale prices, of a strategically vital, American-owned global fiber-optic network to an Indian concern with close ties to its government and military.
The Indians appreciate owning such a network, built out over four years at a cost of some $3.4 billion, is an essential building block to commercial pre-eminence in the 21st century. The growing demands of the U.S. military for the bandwidth necessary to transfer in a secure fashion immense quantities of video and other data in real-time to commanders and forces all over the world transform this fiber optic infrastructure being sold by Tyco into something else altogether -- a force-multiplier of immeasurable value.
That would, of course, only be true if two conditions apply:
(1) The owners of the fiber-optic network are willing to have our armed forces utilize their cable. It is noteworthy that the Indian company trying to buy the Tyco infrastructure, VSNL, several years ago refused to allow a fiber-optic connection to be made to the U.S. base at Diego Garcia.
(2) The U.S. military must have confidence its message traffic will not be intercepted. The beauty of fiber-optic communications systems is that they are very hard to penetrate -- unless, that is, you own the infrastructure and, therefore, physically control its cable lines. If the next owner of Tyco's global network is a company 26 percent owned by the Indian government and a major supplier to India's military and intelligence services, the Pentagon could not be sure its "mail" will not be read by potentially unfriendly eyes. <snip>"

http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050321-090719-1188r.htm