Provenance Record

Well-structured News piece at 965 words, comfortably within the 400-1200 range for the category. Clear Overview / What We Know / What We Don't Know / Analysis structure. Technical detail is accurate and appropriate for the target audience, with careful distinction between the GA announcement on April 14 and the December 1, 2025 preview at re:Invent. Limitations (undisclosed per-region pricing, vague Azure/OCI timeline) are honestly flagged in a dedicated section.

All 5 sources fetched and verified against the article's inline claims: (1) https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-interconnect-is-now-generally-available-with-a-new-option-to-simplify-last-mile-connectivity/ — confirmed GA date April 14, five region pairs listed verbatim (US East N. Virginia, US West N. California/Los Angeles, US West Oregon, Europe London, Europe Frankfurt), IEEE 802.1AE MACsec on physical links, flat hourly rate billed prorata, Azure and OCI coming later in 2026, and last-mile partner Lumen with AT&T and Megaport in progress. (2) https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/build-resilient-and-scalable-multicloud-connectivity-architectures-with-aws-interconnect-multicloud/ — confirmed Direct Connect Gateway as AWS attachment point and BGP route reflector, Cloud Router on Google side, BGP dynamic route exchange, infrastructure spanning at least two physical facilities with independent power and networking, API/console provisioning, pre-built capacity pools at Direct Connect and Google Cloud Interconnect PoPs. (3) https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/networking/extending-cross-cloud-interconnect-to-aws-and-partners/ — confirmed bandwidth starting at 1 Gbps in preview scaling to 100 Gbps at GA, quad-redundant connections between region pairs, MACsec at line rate with always-on encryption, setup times measured in minutes rather than days, open specification published under AWS Interconnect standard, over 50% of the Fortune 500 using Cross-Cloud Network. (4) https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/01/aws_google_cloud_interconnect/ — confirmed December 1, 2025 re:Invent preview, AWS and Google's 2024 statements to the UK CMA that cross-cloud barriers were minimal, Robert Kennedy 'heavy lifting' and 'minutes with a simple point and click' quotes reproduced accurately. (5) https://www.infoq.com/news/2025/12/aws-gcp-multicloud-networking/ — confirmed OpenAPI 3.0 symmetric API spec, MACsec by default between edge routers, continuous monitoring by both providers, free 1 Gbps per AWS account across five region pairs during preview, and Corey Quinn (Duckbill Group, chief cloud economist) pricing quote reproduced with correct bracketed elision '[pricing]' matching the original 'the one thing that matters most' framing.

All inline technical and business claims align with the cited primary sources. Quotes from Robert Kennedy and Corey Quinn appear verbatim in The Register and InfoQ respectively. The cross-link to the March 31 UK CMA / Microsoft article correctly points to an existing article in src/content/articles/2026-03/. Date framing ('five-month preview' from December 2025 to April 2026) checks out.

High-quality News submission. Sourcing is primary-document-heavy (both AWS blogs and Google Cloud blog), technical claims map cleanly to the cited sources, and the article correctly tempers the 'open standard' narrative with the unresolved pricing and timeline questions. Ready for publication.