Cat Telecom Seeks Submarine Fiber-optic Link To Us

[george]

CAT Telecom seeks submarine fiber-optic link to US

BANGKOK: -- The board of directors of Thailand's CAT Telecom Pcl. has approved a plan to co-invest with eight other countries plus China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in a submarine fibre-optic construction project which will link Southeast Asia with Australia and the United States.

CAT Telecom president Phisal Jorphochaudom said CAT, which has not yet floated shares on the Thai stock market, will ask the cabinet later this month to approve the plan. The proposal has each country

contributing Bt1.98 billion to hire ASN-NEC Co. to lay the submarine network linking Southeast Asia with Australia and the US.

Participating countries include Brunei, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, the US and China's Hong Kong.

Upon completion, the submarine fibre-optic network will link the region with the US to provide broadband Internet service.

The new network will be the seventh of its kind which will link Thailand with several countries and will enable this country to become a telecommunication hub within the next five years, said Mr. Phisal.

--TNA 2007-04-20

[Crushdepth]

Yet again, rampant hubism, I love it :-)

[bkk_mike]

One more submarine cable is not going to make Thailand a hub (especially when all the other countries around it are also using the same cable).

It might help Thailand have a half-decent internet though, which might prevent Thailand becoming more of an Internet backwater... (depending on the cable's bandwidth, and CAT's monopoly pricing of it)

[brianinbangkok]

CAT Telecom seeks submarine fiber-optic link to US

BANGKOK: -- The board of directors of Thailand's CAT Telecom Pcl. has approved a plan to co-invest with eight other countries plus China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in a submarine fibre-optic construction project which will link Southeast Asia with Australia and the United States.

CAT Telecom president Phisal Jorphochaudom said CAT, which has not yet floated shares on the Thai stock market, will ask the cabinet later this month to approve the plan. The proposal has each country

contributing Bt1.98 billion to hire ASN-NEC Co. to lay the submarine network linking Southeast Asia with Australia and the US.

Participating countries include Brunei, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia, the US and China's Hong Kong.

Upon completion, the submarine fibre-optic network will link the region with the US to provide broadband Internet service.

The new network will be the seventh of its kind which will link Thailand with several countries and will enable this country to become a telecommunication hub within the next five years, said Mr. Phisal.

--TNA 2007-04-20

They refused to link up last time , lets just be happy they have learned a lesson that satellites can not replace being on a fibre optic cable

As for the naive dream of Thailand becoming a hub of anything , never mind let em dream , all I want is faster internet

[alexth]

I don't know who is dreaming the most. Us or them?

[Phil Conners]

FINALLY!!!!!

[nikster]

I don't know who is dreaming the most. Us or them?

I am dreaming... of fast internet.

I want to send flowers and whiskey to CAT now... CAT you are my hero!

First they roll out nation-wide 3G network, now this. Excellent stuff.

As for speed - don't worry, as these things go new cables tend to have massive capacity compared to older ones - the cost of laying the cable is so high that the companies doing it will make sure to cram all the latest fiber tech in there. Latest info on such cables that I could find indicates that 2 or more Terabits is currently standard.

This has the potential to be a huge improvement over the current capacity which is 20Gbps I believe. How 'bout 500x that? Woo-hoo!

How long does it take to lay cables like this? More than 1 year?

:D :D :bah:

Edited April 22, 2007 by nikster

[paveet]

SEA-ME-WE4 was opened in mid 2006 (the link connecting SE Asia, Middle East and Western Europe). What difference did that make? Don't cheer up just yet

[meadish_sweetball]

Decent news, but I am not holding my breath knowing how the rule 'maximum return on investment' means the capacity of the new cable will quickly be swallowed up by a new market segment when they start offering "semi-broadband" internet at 200-300 baht per month.

Opening the market to outside investors would rapidly increase the backbone capacity for the benefit of everyone, including the country's overall economy, apart from the ones who are now charging exorbitant amounts for international bandwidth and refuse to let go of their near-monopoly...

All eggs in the CAT basket is not a good idea for the future.

[nikster]

SEA-ME-WE4 was opened in mid 2006 (the link connecting SE Asia, Middle East and Western Europe). What difference did that make? Don't cheer up just yet

How much data does SEA-ME-WE4 carry and what percentage was the Thai involvement in this though?

The way I read the news is that there are 8 partners to be investing in the new cable, which only goes to the US.

Reading it again, it doesn't really say that the Thai investment is 1/8th of the total ... 2Bn Baht sounds like it's a lot less than 1/8th actually, given that SEA4 up there had an estimated cost of USD 500M.

So remaining question is how much bandwidth will Thailand get out of this new cable. One would assume something like this:

Thai bandwidth = (total bandwidth) * (thai investment / total cost).

It's probably too early to cheer. However, it's a heck of a lot better than an IT minister who says he finds the internet "not exciting" and never uses it

I totally agree with meadish in that opening up the market would be a much better solution. I still think that will happen eventually. As somebody in this forum said (sorry don't remember who that was) "Common sense usually prevails in Thailand, after all other options have been exhausted"

Edited April 23, 2007 by nikster

[paveet]

I'm not totally aware of how much the SEA-ME-WE4 carries for Thailand. However, what I do know is this cable has a design capacity of 1.28 terabits per second but it's shared over 16 countries.

I think the C&W, FT and TIS/Seabone link goes across it. I could be wrong though.

The proposal has each country

contributing Bt1.98 billion to hire ASN-NEC Co. to lay the submarine network linking Southeast Asia with Australia and the US.

This implies that Bt 1.98 billion is 1/8. But.. is a billion 10^9 or 10^12 in this case?

Bt1.98 billion seems a very small amount. So if you think of it assuming Bt1.98 billion is really 1/8, 8 countries --> Bt 15.84 billion.

15.84 x 10^9 / 35 = 4.53 x 10^8 US Dollars. That's US$452M between less countries but a longer distance. Unless we're using the American definition of billion.

Pavee

Edited April 23, 2007 by paveet

[TopDogger]

Yet again, rampant hubism, I love it :-)

They'll wake up one day

[jit2002]

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8OOSREO0.htm

[nikster]

Paveet, I suppose that any article written in English uses the american definition of billion which is 1000 million.

The cost of the cable is in fact USD500m, as per jit2002's link, and also in forbes.

The fiber optic cable, dubbed the Asia-America Gateway, will connect the U.S. West Coast with Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, as well as offer "seamless interconnection" for those locations with Europe, Africa and Australia, Telekom said in a statement.

Baht 1.98 billion is ~ USD 60m which is just about 1/8th of USD 500m.

Meaning Thailand will get 1/8th of the bandwidth. If that is 1TB/s, it would still leave 125 Gbps for Thailand, a huge increase over what we have at the moment (20Gbps?). Hopefully the new cable can do more like 2TB but I don't know enough about fiber tech to really know what's possible right now.

I also expect ping times to get much better with a direct link to the USA.

Call me an optimist but I think this is going to kick ass.

Edited April 29, 2007 by nikster

[Phil Conners]

If it was just Thailand they'd be sure to get the cheapest cable available, but since this is all of SEA I'm sure the majority of the participants have enough common sense to get the best/fastest cable available so hopefully we're looking at least at 2 TB!

I don't think ping values will improve much. Most of the current delay is due to the physical distance which obviously won't change.

Edited April 29, 2007 by Phil Conners

[alexth]

Yet again, rampant hubism, I love it :-)

They'll wake up one day

Not in our lifetime

[nikster]

If it was just Thailand they'd be sure to get the cheapest cable available, but since this is all of SEA I'm sure the majority of the participants have enough common sense to get the best/fastest cable available so hopefully we're looking at least at 2 TB!

I don't think ping values will improve much. Most of the current delay is due to the physical distance which obviously won't change.

I was thinking the physical line would take a "more direct" route and be shorter but a quick glance at the globe has made me realize that it's not going to be a whole lot shorter, if at all.