Singapore Telecommunications and its Australian subsidiary, Optus, have terminated the Singaporean carrier's Internet peering arrangement with the Western Australian Internet Association's WAIX exchange, citing "a global network consolidation plan".

ZDNet Australia  understands Optus engineers disconnected the peering on Wednesday evening after several days of discussion with the WAIA, angering WAIA president, Kimberley Heitman.

Heitman conceded, however, the peering arrangement, which had been in operation for the best part of two years, had "always been informal, never contractual".

He said the WAIA had no information as to the specifics of the decision, with the only conclusion it could draw being that it was in the telecommunications company's "commercial interest to sever peering" with the WAIX.

"There is a concern perhaps to receive a benefit [the industry] should be paying for".

Heitman acknowledged that without Singapore Telecommunications, the WAIX operation now had "no truly international peering arrangements," meaning its peering arrangements with domestic providers had lost significant value. He said the WAIA was yet to discuss the issue with its larger peering partners such as iiNet and WestNet.

Under the WAIX model, Internet service providers (ISPs) connect for a nominal fee, allowing them to exchange traffic between each other for no additional charge. The service provides a lower-cost alternative for ISPs who normally purchase data from a wholesaler on a usage basis, with the price varying dependent on the quantity of data they buy.

The WAIX, which started operations in 1997, now provides carriage services to all end-users in Western Australia, excluding Telstra, Optus and iPrimus retail customers.

Heitman added that Singapore Telecommunications' move had scuttled the WAIA's plans to facilitate the exchange of content and traffic with Singapore providers.

"Its blocked an opportunity to really develop Singapore-Western Australia sharing of resources and significantly slowed traffic between Perth and Singapore".

He said the WAIA was still involved in discussions with large ISPs such as iPrimus and Telstra regarding their involvement in the exchange.

Singapore Telecommunications had been transporting 10-15 Mbps of traffic direct beween Western Australia and Singapore, or just under 4TB per month. That traffic is now passing between Western Australia and Singapore via the United States or Sydney, adding between 100 milliseconds and 300 milliseconds to the latency, creating problems for real-time Internet applications such as voice over IP and video collaboration.

An Optus spokeswoman had not responded to ZDNet Australia   by presstime.

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