New Trans-Pacific Cable Systems and Potential Opportunities George McLaughlin, Vice-Chair, APAN [email protected] [email protected].

New Trans-Pacific Cable Systemsand Potential Opportunities

George McLaughlin, Vice-Chair, [email protected]

CCIRN meeting, Xi’An 26th August 2007

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Taiwan Earthquake – 26 December 2006

Large earthquake (Richter 7.1) hit Luzon Strait on 26 Dec 2006, with multiple aftershocks (Richter 6.9, 5.6, 5.5, 5.4)

Seven of the nine cable systems passing through the straight were severed

Part of Asia Netcom’s EAC and Guam-Philippines were the only systems that remained in service

Huge financial losses to businesses from being off-air

Took >six weeks to repair all earthquake-damaged cables

3Network Outages – first 3 days of Taiwan Quake

Courtesy:Todd Underwood, Renesys Corp

4Network Outages by country – first 3 days of Taiwan Quake

Courtesy:Todd Underwood, Renesys Corp

Lessons from the Taiwan Earthquake Dramatically showed the fragility of the global Internet Local events can have far-reaching impact Physical failures can take considerable time to remedy Asia is particularly vulnerable Resilience and redundancy are even higher on everyone’s agenda

Several new regional cable systems are now under constructionTrans-Pacific Express (US-China)FLAG NGN (Intra-Asia, Intra-Africa, Mediterranean, trans-Pacific IMEWE/TIC (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Europe)East Asia Crossing Extension (see later)Asia-America Gateway (see later)

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East Asia Crossing

Transpacific ring system connecting South East Asia directly to the USConfiguration: Design capacity 2.56Tbps; initial capacity 200Gbps; 4 fiber pair, DWDMRFS: July 2008

Note – now likely to be Guam only, not Hawaii

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Asia America Gateway

Philippines

Thailand

Brunei

Singapore

Hawaii

United States

Malaysia

Vietnam

Hong Kong

Guam

(Sri Racha)

(Mersing)

(Changi)

(Vung Tau)

(Tungku)

(Lantau)

(La Union)(Tanguisson)

(Keawaula)

(San Luis Obispo)

BU1

BU2 BU3

BU4

BU5

Design Capacity of 1.92 Tbps with direct connectivity between Asia & the US with landings in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and US Mainland.

A network spanning about 19,000 kilometers and will initially cater for 480 Gbit/s of capacity with at least 2 fiber pairs, DWDM

RFS Q4 2008

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Asia America Gateway

Europe

Philippines

Thailand

Brunei

Singapore

Hawaii

Malaysia

Vietnam

Hong Kong

Guam

North Asia

China

India

Africa

MiddleEast

US MAINLAND

Australia

Japan

Provision for extensions to North Asia, South Asia, Australia, Africa, Middle East and Europe

Investment partners in Asia America Gateway AT&T (USA)

Bharti AirTel (India) Government of Brunei Darussalam (Brunei) British Telecom Global Network Services (UK) CAT Telekom (Thailand) Eastern Telecom (Philippines) Indosat (Indonesia) Pacific Communications (Cambodia) Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company (Philippines) PT Telkom (Indonesia) Saigon Postal Corporation (Vietnam) StarHub (Singapore) Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) Telstra (Australia) Telecom New Zealand International (New Zealand) Viettel (Vietnam) and Vietnam Post & Telecommunications Group (Vietnam)

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Some opportunities have come and gone

Asia America Gateway is funded by investment partners An opportunity arose for the R&E sector to become an investment

partner, but we couldn’t (collectively or individually) bring this off in time Government funding agencies use procurement processes to acquire

defined services for a period of time, rather than investment stakes to secure part of an asset for the lifetime of the asset

Investment stake is not an IRU (which these days is really a long-term lease) but conveys all ownership benefits, eg open access to all cable stations, add-drop in any country, sell IRUs, no restrictions on use, etc)

Minimum investment US$3million (for lifetime stake), plus 3% pa O&M

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But others are still there DANTE will go to market in the first half of next year for TEIN3 circuits Experience to date is that the larger the potential number of circuits, the

better the total negotiated deal will be Plan is to give an Industry Briefing at PTC (www.ptc.org) at Hawaii in

January just before Techs in Paradise Given interests in various procurements by Eu and US as well as Asian

countries, might there be some synergy in working together on circuit procurement?

To illustrate how global science is evolving, and the need for good engagement, the next slide shows just a smattering of what’s going on in one area of one discipline, in a sub-set of the global activity (come see the eVLBI demo during the afternoon teabreak on Tuesday 28th Aug)

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Courtesy Paul Boven, JIVE