BANDWIDTH: Packet Geography 2002

Internet infrastructure in South-East Asia and the Indian subcontinent is
wrapped up in a transition from the US outpost to regional Internet axis. The 15
Gbps of intra-Asian submarine cable capacity at the year-end 2000 will have
spiked almost one hundred-fold to 1,215 Gbps at the year-end 2001. Announced
deployments should boost that number, during the following year.

The new capacity–and the corresponding drop in prices–will help stimulate
backbone deployments throughout Asia (see Figure 16. Asia & Pacific
Submarine System Capacity, 1999 and 2001 and Figure 17. Asia & Pacific
International Internet Bandwidth, 1999 and 2001). This trend is already emerging
in India, where the bandwidth drought has been such a major issue that has
occupied front-page real estate in major newspapers.

Like its neighbors towards the east, the subcontinent’s transformation is
very much in progress. VSNL’s aggressive provisioning between 2000 and 2001,
has suddenly placed a large quantity of international capacity in the hands of
the service providers. Furthermore, DishnetDSL’s partnership with TyCom Global
Network should result in South East Asia Cable Network (SEACN), scheduled to go
online in mid-2002 with 640 Gbps of fiber-lit. Rival Bharti’s alliance with
Singapore Telecom is to yield the i2i Cable Network in March 2002, which, when
announced, had the largest upgradeable capacity of any repeater submarine cable
in the world. As Internet capacity continues to shift onto the new systems, more
of India’s

international Internet bandwidth will link to the Asian destinations.

Integrated closely with the North African countries, the
recent surge in international connectivity at Asia’s western edge, owes much
to a single submarine cable provider. When it first entered service in 1997, the
Fiberoptic Link Around the Globe, or FLAG, became the first privately-funded
submarine cable system to connect Europe and Asia. A 2000 move to aggressively
market managed Internet transit services, however, has turned the capacity
provider into a major regional Internet backbone.

FLAG’s Internet backbone strategy has had significant
repercussions in the Middle East, a region whose regulatory environments are
strict enough and whose bandwidth supply is short enough that the provisioning
of a single STM-1 (155 Mbps) Internet connection can be quite disruptive.

Source: TeleGeograhy, Inc