The new Bay of Bengal Gateway Cable has just been announced. This looks promising to be another diverse path to SMW4 cable system that most of the carriers are riding on. However, with the recent SMW4 cable outage that lasted for several weeks, diversity for the west bound is again in the spotlight.
Let's take a look at the various cable maps.
The BBG cable will connect from Singapore and all the way to Oman and the UAE. Then it should connect to europe via IMW or EIG.
IMEWE cable.
EIG cable.
For most part, it would appear to be diverse from SMW4. However, IMEWE and EIG also goes through the Suez Canal and on the same path as SMW4.
The reason why most cables goes through the Suez Canal is not because it is the shortest path but also because it is the easiest as it is on international waters. Imagine if you want to cut across these region via terrestrial. You would have to negotiate with countries like Iran, Saudi, Syria, etc. I think you get the picture. Operation and fault management would be a nightmare.
To be truly diverse, I think taking the terrestrial route seems to be the better option. For TEA, it goes from Hong Kong-China-Russia and on to other parts of Europe. Then why is this route not so popular? Well, mainly because of the cost. It can be as much as 2-3 times more than SMWE4. Until the price of this route comes down, looks like the submarine route will still be the preferred option for most carriers.
There's another new owner for Inteliquent which has seen several change of owners over the past few years. From Tiscali to Tinet (BS equity) to Inteliquent (neutral Tandem) and now GTT. The sale appears to be only the data portion. Neutral Tandem seems to realize the Data part is not making money and has drag themselves on a downward slope even since they decide to buy Tinet. So let's see who makes money so far from such sale.
BS equity buys Tiscali International Network for US$60 Million (47M Euro) in 2009.
Neutral Tandem then buys over for US$95 Million in 2010. Profit of $35 Million. Not bad for approximately just 2 years of ownership. Private equity main purpose is just to make money and they have done just that.
GTT now buys the data portion for US$54.5 Million in 2013. Is that a US$40.5 Million lost in less than 3 years for Neutral Tandem? That shows just how desperate they are in trying to get rid of the data portion to even making a loss. So what happens to the voice portion (the ex-Neutral Tandem)? Re-emerge as another new company?
I will start a series of comparison in broadband prices in each countries that i visited. Of which, i will try to compare the wholesale price that these operators are buying.
For simplicity, 100M fiber broadband speeds will be used:
Monthly published rates
SingTel - $69.90
StarHub - $68.27
M1 - $39
My republic - $38.88
The fiber broadband gives you more value per dollar or per Meg of IP packet as compared to the normal broadband. For example, SingTel is selling $31.90 for 10Mbps speed. This is about $3.19 Per Mbps ($31.90/10). For fiber broadband, it is $0.699 Per Mbps. That's more power per buck. The IP transit price in Singapore right now is below $10 Per Mbps depending on the bandwidths. Thus to make money, the operators have to oversubscribe quite substantially. You need to have mass or economy of scale so the smaller boys will have a tough time.
Obviously, SingTel and StarHub owns the lion share of the market with My republic the least. I think My republic only has about 10,000 subs as of Mar 13. This is considered not bad considering they just started 1 year ago. They just celebrated their 1 year old birthday recently. It will be interesting to see how's the market elsewhere. Will be back soon.
Soon after Pacnet's recent layoffs, Tata also follow suit. Pacnet has layoff approximately 30% of the staff worldwide. Most of the expensive expatriates are the first to be let go. Stories of how unceremoniously they have been let go is rather uncomfortable to Asian standards. After all, the staff have served faithfully for years. Most of them doesn't even know their fate until the actual day as they were escorted to their desk to pack and then out of the office.
As for Tata, they have lay off about 300 staffs worldwide. This includes some of the senior management. The ex-CEO, Bryon Clatterbuck, left all of a sudden sometime in Mar/Apr 2012. He has since joined SEACOM as the Chief Commercial Officer sometime end of 2012. Somehow these senior guys are always able to find another opportunity elsewhere due to their networks. So be sure that this will be the last you hear of Bill Barney.
Since we are at North Korea, let's look into another closed country which is Myanmar. Who's the number 1 in customer backbone in Myanmar? Surprisingly it is TeliaSonera, the Swedish Telecommunications giant.
I was just curious who is the likely ally in the IP world for a hermit state like North Korea which most of the west are much against. Out of which the Americans are the most vocal.
To my surprise.....
It is the Americans!!! Well, the Chinese are expected being their closet ally and supporter.
Looks like the Americans are doing business with the devil (or the Axis of Evil).
There are a few ranking ranking sites out there for IP. Which is more credible and which is not especially for those who needs to evaluate upstreams. Each claim to have their own algorithm (some are secret) to rank each upstream so it may not be easy to dispute if they are right or wrong. Perhaps we shall go by the industry knowledge about their connectivity especially in Asia.
Let's start with Netconfig.
One AS that stood out is AT&T. They have already left the wholesale market and are not longer active in that space. I am not sure if they even have any more customers connected in Asia at all. Yet they are still ranked number 2. In US, I am sure as they are still the incumbent there. However, for those connecting to AT&T in Asia, I believe you will find alot of routes missing and have to go all the way to US and back. And what is Rostelecom doing up there? They are not even a Tier 1 and probably only have presence in Europe?
For SingTel (an Asian carrier), you should get quite good connectivity in Asia but then it is also not a Tier 1 and have little POPs in US and Europe.
Let's define Tier 1. There are a few different interpretations out there but the universally accepted ones is one that doesn't buy transit from anyone.
Next is Fixed and Orbit.
This also doesn't seem right. AT&T is still there and Hurricane electric (HE) who is also not a Tier 1. They are also not that successful in Asia. Sprint is also not longer active in this space. And what's Swisscom doing up there?
Next will be Caida.
Ok, this looks more like it. Those top few are really very active in the market place and winning quite a fair bit of customers so they deserved to be up there. However, for level 3 (AS3356), the connectivity is only in US and Europe as they do not have any POPs in Asia. They have under AS3549 (ex-Global Crossing) which they acquired quite recently but it is still a separate AS number.
Sparkle (AS6762) may be abit high up there as most European ISPs will not consider them a strong contender in those markets. One reason could be because they are cable owner in SMW3/SMW4 and will be stronger in the South Asia market due to this factor.
Lastly, the Renesys. Sorry, you can't see this as it is a paid access (it's not cheap).
This is rather similar to Caida site. It does carefully track the customers acquisitions or even losses by each of the upstream. The reason is the number of prefix is one of the measurement. Whenever an upstream announces new prefix, that means their routing table has increased in size. This matters as it shows the amount of routes you have. Take for example Level 3 (ranked #1), it has about 288k IPv4 prefixes (according to Caida) whereas SingTel (ranked #28) has 29k.
No dispute for Level 3 in US. They are the undisputed number 1. However, under their Europe and Asia backbone ranking, Level 3 is also number 1. There is some problem here though as in Europe, TeliaNet (TeliaSonera) AS1299 should be number 1 as they have the most number of ISP connected (~90%). In Asia, Level 3 (AS3356) do not even have a POP in Asia and they are still separate from AS3549 (ex-Global Crossing). You will be in trouble if you connect to them for Asia routes. All routes from Asia will still have to go back to US and back. The other issue is of course the cost. It is quite expensive to buy an access to Renesys as it is not free. It is probably the most accurate of them all but the only paid service around. Well, good services and product comes at a price. That's how this world works generally.
