In a secret, draped room at Barcelona, a bunch of mobile executives gathered, lit some candles, turned out the lights, chanted a little, and joined hands around a table. The specter of WAP arose, the glass on the ouija board moved, and the letters spelled out “get it right this time.”

The United Nations is poised to launch a new broadband commission in an effort to redress what Denis Gilhooly – principal adviser to the UN Office for Partnerships – describes as up to twenty years of government policies which hindered network rollouts.

PLDT, a member of the AAG submarine cable system, has signed an agreement with Level 3 to use the latter’s “cable landing station connectivity at the AAG system.”

The deal now provides “a diverse and scalable extension of the PLDT pan-Asian network to carry voice, data and video traffic in the US,” the operators said.

The submarine cable market is growing increasingly competitive as differentiators fall away, Southern Cross Cable CEO Fiona Beck told PTC attendees yesterday. The operator enjoys diminishing advantages from being first to market as “everyone is really close these days.”

The submarine cable market weathered the financial crisis largely unscathed, according to industry bosses at this year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council. Alcatel-Lucent submarine projects vice president Leigh Frame said the last year had proven better than carriers had any right to expect, noting suppliers were still being paid.

The global recession has had no impact on international Internet bandwidth demand, according to TeleGeography strategy vice president Stephan Beckert. Speaking to Pacific Telecommunications Council attendees in Honolulu, he said international Internet bandwidth was showing no signs of strain with plenty of unlit capacity to take up the slack.