Telstra links direct to China - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Telstra links direct to China

October 13, 2000
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Telstra-links-direct-to-China-/0,130061791,120100924,00.htm

Telstra's Internet traffic between Australia and China no longer has to be routed via the US along the telco's direct Australia-China network connection.

The carrier will activate "capacity it owns on new submarine cables commissioned in the past few months," Telstra Public Affairs spokesman Martin Ratia said.

The cable that facilitates the bulk of that direct connection between Australia and China is known as the sea-me-we-3 cable and has a designed capacity of 40 Gbps. It is currently operating at a capacity of 8Mbps, which will be "adjusted according to demand," Ratia explained.

The direct link -- which has been available for the past week or so -- follows increased demand for International Internet capacity. "Demand is doubling every ten months," Ratia said, "we are more than doubling capacity so we don't have to keep doing it," Ratia added.

Routing Internet traffic to the US also added substantially to the time it took Internet users to upload and download information -- the direct connection will provide a faster, improved service. "The option will always exist to obtain connectivity to China via the US, but the direct connection will provide much better quality," Ratia said.

The direct connection is part of several network enhancements planned for the Asia-Pacific region. This includes an upgrade of the Australia-Singapore Internet traffic stream from 4 to 45 Mbps and Australia-Japan from 10 to 49 Mbps, "a significant bandwidth increase for each route," Telstra's MD, Director Global Wholesale, John Hibbard said in a prepared statement.

Other planned enhancements planned include additional bandwidth upgrades to Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Ratia confirmed that the next few months would see the enhanced networks in Singapore and Japan up and running, with the remaining Asia-Pacific countries to "follow as soon as possible after that," Ratia said.