Evolution of Asia Pacific subsea cable capacity and its use

The dawn of a golden age for APAN’s R&E community

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Yves PoppeA*STAR Computational Resource CentreSingaporeChair APAN Broadband Backbone Committee

BBC meeting (Broadband Backbone Committee)APAN 43 February 12th-17th New Delhi, India

Plenty of terabit action in AsiaPac

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SEAMEWE-5launcheddec 2016APG:launchednov 2016AAE-1:Q12017SEA-US:Q22017

Momentousimpacttobeexpectedonbandwidthpricingifsufficient

liberalizationoftelecommmarket

Source:Telegeography

SeaMeWe-5 up and running• Went live on december 15th and goes from Marseille and Singapore and

connects 16 countries : France, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Djibouti, Oman, UAE, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore

• 100Gbps DWDM technology with 24Tbps capacity on three fibre pairs; carrier neutralPoPs in Marseille (Interxion) and Singapore (Equinix and Global Switch).

• Consortium members: Bangladesh (BSCCL), China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, China United Network Communications, Djibouti Telecom (DT), United Emirates (du), Myanmar Post and Telecom (MPT), Ooredoo Group, France (Orange), Indonesia (Telin), Saudi (STC), Singapore (Singtel), Italy(Sparkle), Sri Lanka (SLT), Egypt (TE), Malaysia (TM ), TeleYemen, Turkey(TTI) and Trans World Associates.

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APG is up and running• Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) was launched in November, 100Gbps

capable and capacity of 54.8Tbps. Consortium members includeNTT, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, KT Corporation, StarHub, LG Uplus, China Mobile, Viettel, Vietnam Telecom International, Global Transit, Facebook and TIME dotcom.

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Asia Pac Subsea capacity: 2016 has been great and more coming

• 2016 has seen the activation of

– the US-Japan FASTER cable (60Tbs) – the Singapore-Malaysia-Oman-UAE BBG (Bay of Bengal) cable– the long awaited SEAMEWE-5– The intra Asia’s APG.

• Major cables coming in 2017

– AAE-1 to Europe with 40Tbps capacity in Q1 2017– SEA-US on the US-Hawaii-Guam-Philippines-Indonesia in Q2 2017– MCP cable : Malaysia – Cambodia-Thailand: RFS Q1 2017with 1.5 Tbps

initially, upgradable up to 30Tbps. Golden opportunity for R&E in the region.

– ATISA: May 2017 4Tbps cap: Guam to Northern Marianas– NCP (New Cross Pacific) linking China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and

the US. 80TBps. In Q4 2017.

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New Transpacific cables coming

• SEA-US– Indonesia - Philippines – US – via Guam and Hawaii– Design Capacity: 20Tbps– RFS: Q2 2017

• NCP: New Cross Pacific– Will connect China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the United States– Design capacity; 81.9Tbps; Micosoft is a partner – Supplier: TE Subcom– RFS: Q4 2017 – Q1 2018

• PLCN: Pacific Light Cable Network – direct HK-USA cable. 5 pair, 120Tbps! Will become reality : Google and Facebook invest– RFS : mid 2018

• HAWAIKI: Australia – Hawaii- US West Coast– -supplier TE Subcom, 30Tbps design capacity– RFS mid 2018. First financing tranche received on July 2nd. Work starts early 2017.

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More projects materializing• ASC (Australia Singapore Cable): linking Perth is a go. Vocus signed an

agreement signed with Alcatel in december 2016; Singapore landing rightssecured. RFS date: august 2018, 30Tbps .

• Docomo’s ATISA cable cable linking Guam and the Northern Marianas. RFS May 2017; 4Tbps cap. A number of other cables in the Pacific islandsincluding Samoa – Fiji (Suva) RFS Q3 2017 plus a spur to Vanua Levu, north of Suva.

• NEXT : Southern Cross project 60Tbps Australia-NZ-USA RFS end 1019• MYTHIC: Myanmar-Malaysia-Thailand 20Tbps cap RFS mid 2018• SEAX-1: Singapore-Indonesia-Malaysia, 24 pairs, 9.6Tbps RFS Q4 2017 ?

SEAX-2: Singapore- Indonesia - Guam – 10Tbps (financing?)• MOANA cable: NZ to Hawaii via Samoa, 20Tbps, RFS 2018• TRIDENT-1: Singapore-Indonesia-Australia (Perth); 28Tbps RFS Q2 2018?• HK-G : HK-Guam 48Tbps RFS 2020. Will connect to SEA-US

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Elsewhere in the world

• Monet cable: 60Tbps, three pairs, Brazil to Forida: RFS Q2 2017

• Seabras-1: Brazil to New Jersey: RFS june 2017

• MAREA: transatlantic, Virginia Beach to Bilbao, Spain; led by Microsoft and Facbook; 160Tbps capacity!! RFS Q4 2017

• SACS : Angola to Brazil where it will connect to Monet: Q4 2018

• On the R&E scene, Indiana University and Geant inaugurated a new transatlantic 100Gbps link on Aquacomm’ s AEConnect cable on January 17th for NEAAR. Seventh 100Gbps transatlantic R&E link.

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Petabit level transoceanic cables in the early 2020s?

• With MAREA capacity of 160Tbps coming end of 2017 the horizon of the late 2020’s seems passé.

• Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks and Nokia Bell Labs have achieved 65 Tbps transmission capacity over a 6,600 km single mode fiber using Bell Labs’ Probabilistic Constellation Shaping (PCS) technology with a new modulation technique to maximize the distance and capacity of high-speed transmission in optical networks.

• In the meantime Aqua Comms has completed a trial of Ciena’sWaveLogic 3 Extreme transmission technology on their AEConnectwhich connects NY to London via Dublin. This confirmed that Ciena’s150 Gbps per wavelength 8QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology can already increase most up to date capacity by 50%.

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2016 saw considerable new APAN international capacity coming online

• Japan, Korea and Australia activated each a transpacific 100Gbps transpacific REN circuits bringing the total of five 100Gbps ccts!

• NICT and NII are now connected at 10Gbps to Singapore• Korea KOREN is now connected at 10Gbps to Singapore• India NKN is now connected at 10Gbps to Europe and to the USA and also to

Singapore.• Japan activated 2x10Gbps to Europe.

• The concept of a Guam R&E PoP is making progress in anticipation of the University of Hawaii 100Gbps LA-Hawaii-Guam cct scheduled for Q2 2017

• One dark spot: The 2.5Gbps Fujairah (UAE) – Singapore cct was cancelled. Reason: cross connect costs

• And I certainly forgot some other new R&E circuits, please let me know.

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Vital implications for NREN’s globally

• The major growth in the use of international subsea cable transmission capacity is no longer for the public internet but for private networks!

• Content providers now have the market power. Google invested in Unity, South East Asia Japan and Faster cables. Facebook is in Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) and Microsoft in New Cross Pacific (NCP) while Google and Facebook announced in october 2016 their participation in PLNC.

• Sale of excess compute and storage capacity led to the Cloud era. Big data analysis has spread to the commercial sector. Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft as well as the Content titans are eying this exploding market. Some of them now introduced specific offers tailored to the R&E Super Computing Community!

• Provision of low cost internet access no longer justifies NREN’s. To remain relevant NREN’s have to focus on the big compute and big data needs of their constituents. This means bandwidth, lots of it.

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Supercomputing, key to Economic Prosperity

• Cloud Computing, IoT, data mining, data analytics and supercomputing are now perceived as essential to the wealth, security and perennity of nations.

• Super Computing simulation and analysis have become a source of discovery. Extraordinary amounts of data are now collected and revolutionize storage. Genomics and personalized medicine as well as Cloud Computing require ultra high security and reliability, fast data replication and disaster recovery.

• Exascale computing is seen as the next Frontier with the USA, Europe, Japan and China allocating each in excess of one billion US$ to be the first to reach this milestone by the very early 2020’s. The new ISC16 TOP500 list is now led by China’s new 97 petaflop machine called Taihu light. IBM promises its new Summit machine to be delivered early 2018 as ORNL’s new Titan will reach 200 Petaflop. The race intensifies.

• To participate in this titanic race, Singapore invites APAN members to participate in building the road to distributed exascale as envisaged by the A*STAR initiated InfiniCortex project.

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Transpacific as of end 2016

• PC-1 (Pacific Crossing 2001)): 8.4Tbps cap (2.6Tbps lit) on Northern leg • JUS (Japan – US 2001): 6.4Tbps on Northern les 9Tbps • TGN-P (Tata Pacific 2002): 30.4Tbps (2.72Tbps lit) on Northern leg. • TPE (TransPacific Express 2008): 8Tbps cap (2.2Tbps lit) • AAG (Asia America Gateway 2009): 8Tbps cap (1.88 lit) • UNITY/EAC: 2010; 9Tbps (2.4 lit)

• Google is partner• FASTER: 2016: Taiwan-Japan-US

– Design Capacity: 60Tbps!– RFS date of june 2016 was met for

Japan – US segment.– Google is partner– Congratulations!

FASTERcable

Source:Telegeography

Asia – Europe

• SMW-4 2005 RFS; 6.48Tbps potential capacity– Upgrade from 40 to 100Gbps completed in March 2015 using

Mitsubishi.• IMEWE (2010 RFS; 2015 upgrade to 14.4Tbps) 100Gbps upgrade

completed Q3 2016; 3.72Tbps lit• TGN-EA 2011; 8.4Tbps cap 1.08Tbps lit • FLAG FALCON 2006; 11.8Tbps cap• EIG 2011: 24Tbps cap• MENA 2013: 3.2Tbps cap Egypt-India• EPEG 2012; 3.2Tbps• BBG: Bay of Bengal Cable

– RFS: went live in june 2016 – Design capacity: 55Tbps, 3 fibre pairs, 9Tbps lit– connectivity from Malaysia and Singapore to Oman and the UAE.– Connects to EIG and EPEG

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Intra Asia

• APCN-2 2001: 25.6Tbps cap• C2C: 30.55Tbps • FNAL: up to 12 Tbps• TGN-IA: 21.5Tbps cap; 7.8 Tbps lit• ASE: 19Tbps • APG: 54.8Tbps

– RFS: 2016; Facebook is co-owner

• SJC 2013 (SE Asia Japan): 45.6Tbps cap. 17.22 lit Links Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines, option to connect with Thailand. – Upgraded to 100Gbps. Connects into UNITY to cross the Pacific.

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South Pacific

• In operation:– Southern Cross: 2000; 14Tbps (5.8Tbps lit). 100Gbps capable– AJC 2001 (Australia-Japan Cable): 7 Tbps cap (1Tbps lit). 100Gbps capable– PPC-1 2009 (Pipe): Australia – Guam – 10.24 cap. 100Gbps capable

• Planned but most still trying to finalize financing. ASC most promising.– APX-East: Sydney – Auckland – Hawaii-US West Coast; RFS Q4 2017 (??)

40Tbps– APX-West: Perth – Jakarta – Singapore; RFS 2018 (??) 24Tbps – APX Central: Sydney – Perth; RFS 2018 (?) 32Tbps, supplier TE Subcom– ASC: Perth – Jakarta – Singapore; RFS aug 2018 40Tbps, Alcatel– Trident: Perth – Indonesia – Singapore; 11Tbps cap to Sng RFS 2018 (?) – AWE Australia West Express: connecting Perth in Australia and Djibouti via

Diego Garcia; RFS Q12018 (?) 20 Tbps, owner Goto Networks

Singapore Intercontinental R&E Connectivity

London,EU

Singapore

LosAngeles,USA

100Gbpsco-fundedwith

10Gbpsco-fundedwith

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The world will see Exascale Computing and

Petabit transcontinental data transmission by end 2022

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. Erich Fromm