State of the Internet

Akamai has released its latest state of the internet report. Surprisingly Indonesia has the 2nd lowest speed in Asia.

What's worst is the response from the Minister of Communication and Information Tifatul Sembiring. Through his Twitter account, he responded with a question," Fellow twitters, what would you use the internet for if its speed is faster? ... :) *IWantToKnowSoMuch* ". 

This must be the ultimate insult and embarrassment to many indonesians who are very tech savvy (no 4 in the world with Facebook subscribers). Talking about ignorance or competence ....

Here's the rest of the report...

Tribute to Happy Zhang Hua Lian of China Telecom

  

Our thoughts and prayers are with Happy Zhang, her family and to

 all on Malaysia Airlines MH370.

New World Number 1 in IP backbone

It's official. We have now a new world number 1 in IP backbone. It is TeliaSonera, the Swedish Giant. They are really growing fast considering where they were a few years ago. Word is that they hired the best kick-ass salesperson in the market and literally just move up the ranking. Well done, It wasn't too long ago that Level 3 was known as the internet. Now TeliaSonera has proven it is possible to kick Level 3 out of the top spot. Hope they stay there long enough.

Layoffs for GTT/Inteliquent

Not long after the acquisition by GTT of Inteliquent, a major layoffs was carried out. They layoff up to 30-40% of the ex-Inteliquent staffs sometime last month including some of the founding members based in Italy. Many of the critical support staffs are gone which left customers in the lurch and confused.

Looks like no industry is safe and surely not Telecommunications. A pity and farewell to the once rising star called Tinet. This blog posting is a tribute to that little company that challenges the giants of the Telecommunications world.

Myanmar Picks Telenor and Ooredoo

The win by Telenor is expected as they are really strong contender and operates several mobile operations around the world, including a few in Asia. They also owns DTAC (Thailand), Digi (Malaysia), Grameenphone (Bangladesh), Uninor (India). Most of which are doing very well except Uninor. 

The dark house is surely Ooredoo which is formerly Qatar Telecom. This is a surprise as one would think that it has to be the japanese. Their PM came recently and waived off all the debts plus pledging new loans. If I am KDDI, it must surely hurt. Well, this is not the first time the Japanese was trying to leave some legacy in this country. Remember the Burma Railway (aka death railway)? That's the most famous or infamous contributions here.  I think the debt the Japanese owes to Asia is far more that whatever they can write off. 

However, one wonders how does Ooredoo won it then. Could it be related to any of the Oil or Gas potential Myanmar has? Qatar definitely has the oil and gas expertise and Myanmar the untapped supply....That's got to be even more profitable than Telecommunications. We shall see soon....

Anyway, congratulations to the 2 winners to one of the very last frontier of Telecommunications (the other one may be North Korea).

Diverse West Bound route with BBG cable?

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.

Another new owner for Inteliquent

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?