Australia Japan Cable collaborates to create a connectivity solution on AAG
Bharti Airtel and Australia Japan Cable collaborate to create a new connectivity solution to Australia from Singapore and the US
Partnership leverages strong subsea cable assets of both companies to provide leading edge solutions to business and wholesale customers
Australia Japan Cable and Bharti Airtel announced today a partnership agreement to interconnect their current and future networks in Guam. This landmark agreement will allow both parties to offer services from a number of locations including Singapore and the USA West Coast to Australia. This paves the way to offering new and alternative routes to existing customers and future prospects. This innovative agreement will utilize the undersea cable assets of Bharti Airtel and AJC. Bharti Airtel will be utilizing its assets on the upcoming AAG “Asia America Gateway” Cable System and AJC will use its assets on its Australia Japan Cable System. The cable systems will be connected in Guam. AJC will provide capacity between Australia and Guam, whilst still offering connectivity to Japan. Bharti Airtel will be provisioning services between Guam and major hubs like Singapore, Japan and the US. The joint network is expected to carry commercial traffic by Q2 FY 08-09. “With the demand for connectivity to and from Australia growing multifold, a partnership with an established carrier like AJC is a natural fit with our endeavour of developing innovative business solutions that enhance our global network capabilities. Our partnership with AJC, coupled with our investments in AAG will ensure flexible options for connectivity to Australia from anywhere in the world, for business and wholesale customers. This initiative is part of Bharti Airtel’s investments of over Rs.1500 crore in the last two years, in existing and upcoming cable routes to create one of the most robust and diverse communications networks in the world,” noted David Nishball, President Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel “AJC has a longstanding reputation for service excellence on the north south route between Australia and Japan. For some time we have sought to expand our footprint and provide our customers with diversified options to broaden and protect their routes. In this partnership with Bharti Airtel we believe we have secured a seamless low latency transaction to the USA as well as diverse and secure options into India and multiple Asian destinations for our customers,” said Robin Russell, CEO of AJC. This will offer a completely new route to customers which avoids the areas most prone to seismic activity off the Taiwan region, which have previously resulted in damage to undersea cables and network disruptions, thus offering customers a highly resilient and shorter route.
About AJC
Australia-Japan Cable is a submarine cable directly connecting Australia and Japan, via Guam. The AJC network also provides access to the high capacity, high volume, low unit cost Trans Pacific and intra Asia cables via Guam and Japan to enable onward connectivity. The AJC Ready For Service date was achieved in December 2001. AJC is
a 12,700km optical fibre ring cable network with Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology providing 10Gbit/s wavelengths with a design capacity of up to 64 waves per fibre pair. SDH capacity is provided including automatic network protection with ring and span switching in accordance with ITU-T Rec. G.841 MS SPRING in the event of terminal equipment or cable or repeater faults. In April 2008 the network was upgraded and equipped from its original 80Gbit/s to 240Gbit/s. The current capability of AJC is over 1000Bit/s enabling further upgrades as required. A collapsed ring configuration is used where the fibre pairs share a common sheath on a historically safe route between branching units in 4000m water depth where separate landings are made in each of Australia, Guam and Japan. AJC enables diverse landing points, Paddington and Oxford falls in Australia, Tanguisson and Tumon Bay in Guam and Shima and Maruyama in Japan, then Asia and North America via onward connectivity. Carriers can also use AJC as a diverse cable system to other cables connecting in all landing point locations. AJC offers a range of products that Capacity Users can suit to their individual network requirements. These range from Protected SDH, FlexProtect, Direct Wavelength Access and Ethernet Services. For more information, visit
ajcable.com
Bharti Airtel Limited, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is Asia’s leading integrated telecom services provider with operations in India and Sri Lanka and an aggregate of 93.8 million customers as of end of February 2009, consisting of 91.11 million mobile customers. Bharti Airtel Limited has been voted as India’s most innovative company, in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal. Bharti Airtel is structured into three strategic business units – Mobile services, Telemedia services and Enterprise services. The mobile business offers services in India and Sri Lanka. The Telemedia business provides broadband and telephone services in 95 cities, DTH services and has recently forayed into the IPTV services. The Enterprise business provides end-to-end telecom solutions to corporate customers and national and international long distance services to carriers. All these services are provided under the Airtel brand. Airtel’s high-speed optic fibre network currently spans over 90,205 kms covering all the major cities in the country. The company has two international landing stations in Chennai that connects two submarine cable systems – i2i to Singapore and SEA-ME-WE-4 to Europe. For more information, visit
.bhartiairtel.in
About Bharti Airtel Limited