New Trans-Pacific Cable Systems and Potential Opportunities George McLaughlin Backbone Committee Meeting, Xi’An 29 th August 2007

2 Taiwan Earthquake – 26 December 2006  Large earthquake (Richter 7.1) hit Luzon Strait on 26 Dec 2006, with multiple aftershocks (Richter 6.9, 5.6, 5.5, 5.4)  Seven of the nine cable systems passing through the straight were severed  Part of Asia Netcom’s EAC and Guam-Philippines were the only systems that remained in service  Huge financial losses to businesses from being off-air  Took >six weeks to repair all earthquake-damaged cables

3 Network Outages by country – first 3 days of Taiwan Quake Courtesy: Todd Underwood, Renesys Corp

Lessons from the Taiwan Earthquake  Dramatically showed the fragility of the global Internet  Local events can have far-reaching impact  Physical failures can take considerable time to remedy  Asia is particularly vulnerable  Resilience and redundancy are even higher on everyone’s agenda  Several new regional cable systems are now under construction  Trans-Pacific Express (US-China)  FLAG NGN (Intra-Asia, Intra-Africa, Mediterranean, trans-Pacific  IMEWE/TIC (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Europe)  East Asia Crossing Extension (see later)  Asia-America Gateway (see later) 4

5 East Asia Crossing  Transpacific ring system connecting South East Asia directly to the US  Configuration: Design capacity 2.56Tbps; initial capacity 200Gbps; 4 fiber pair, DWDM  RFS: July 2008 Note – now likely to be Guam only, not Hawaii

6 Asia America Gateway  Design Capacity of 1.92 Tbps with direct connectivity between Asia & the US with landings in Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and US Mainland.  A network spanning about 19,000 kilometers and will initially cater for 480 Gbit/s of capacity with at least 2 fiber pairs, DWDM  RFS Q4 2008

7 Asia America Gateway Europe Philippines Thailand Brunei Singapore Hawaii Malaysia Vietnam Hong Kong Guam North Asia China India Africa Middle East US MAINLAND Australia Japan Provision for extensions to North Asia, South Asia, Australia, Africa, Middle East and Europe

Investment partners in Asia America Gateway 8 Australia Telstra Brunei Government of Brunei Darussalam Cambodia Pacific Communications India Bharti AirTel Indonesia Indosat & PT Telkom Malaysia Telekom Malaysia New Zealand Telecom New Zealand International Philippines Eastern Telecom & Philippines Long Distance Telephone Company Singapore StarHub Thailand CAT Telekom UK British Telecom Global Network Services US AT&T Vietnam Saigon Postal Corporation & Viettel & Vietnam Post & Telecommunications Group