More undersea cable wars brewing in India

Thu Dec 23 13:37:16 UTC 2004

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 13:16:09 +0000, Adrian Chadd <adrian at creative.net.au> wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, Dec 23, 2004, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
> > >
> > > .. and meanwhile, the best part of 32 STM-1s worth of fiber is lying dark ...
> > 
> > If they lit /all/ of the fibre, don't you think it'll all be used very very quickly?
> 
> God knows there's enough demand for it.  Only, bandwidth prices are
> artificially inflated because of this shortage, and this would make
> prices drop SHARPLY

I know what its like. I'm in /Australia/. Trying to get bandwidth into
Australia up until about two years ago was /really damned difficult/.
Heck, trying to get bandwidth between cities was sometimes more expensive
than bandwidth out of Australia.

> > What will they do then? Lay more fibre next year? :)
> > 
> 
> FALCON (another FLAG cable) and SEA-ME-WE4 are both coming into India
> by mid to end 2005, as are a few smaller cables to places like
> Singapore

But, like all other things, this timeline isn't fixed, hard in stone.
What if they miss their timeline? What if there's teething problems?
What if one of the existing fibres suddenly decides to not work?

Its a crappy position to be in, I completely agree. But I think you should
consider how much time, effort and money it takes to lay /new/ cable.
Its eas(ier) to just light up a new pair when the demand is there.
Capacity planning isn't easy when it takes a lot of said
time, effort and money to lay new cable.

Adrian

-- 
Adrian Chadd			"You don't have a TV? Then what's
<adrian at creative.net.au>	    all your furniture pointing at?"