Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.

[jfmezei at vaxination.ca (Jean-François Mezei)]

Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/business/30pipes.html?partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Pardon my ignorance here, but isn't this more of a case of traffic
growing outside of the USA which means that traffic within the USA
represents a smaller share of the total internet traffic ?


Did western europe ever really have a primary route via the USA to reach
asia  ? (I realise that during the cable cuts in middle east last year,
traffic might have been rerouted via USA but this would be a temporary
situation).

There may be political issues since the USA decided that there was to be
no privacy with regards to traffic flowing to/from non-USA countries (so
the 3 letter acronym orgs could spy/record that traffic without
warrant). However, I am not sure if other transit providers would have
built cables designed to avoid transit via the USA since then. It takes
time to build a cable.