Cost of transit and options in APAC

Wed Aug 11 19:53:18 UTC 2010

On 8/11/10 12:29 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
> Nice to see this change....
> 
> APAC has been obliged to pay the cost to peer with the US (long
> distance links are expensive). Now that US wants to peer with Asia,
> pricing may become more balanced...

I think the question is more like why am I being quoted $100 A megabit
in India for transit in India? Not why am I being charged for for the
transport cost across the pacific.

The answer has more to do with the maturity of comms infrastructure, the
cost of captial, and regulatory or monopoloy capture than it does with
some artifical lack of price equilibrium.

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Ulevitch"
> <david at ulevitch.com> To: nanog at merit.edu Sent: Thursday, 12 August,
> 2010 7:00:12 AM Subject: Cost of transit and options in APAC
> 
> Hi Nanog,
> 
> As we extend our reach into Asia, we're finding that our typical 
> carriers (see: upstreams of AS36692) who provide service to us in 
> North America and Europe are not able to offer us service in Asia 
> either (1) at all or (2) at prices remotely resembling our pricing
> in NA and EU.  For example: Level(3) simply has no presence in Asia
> and on the pricing side, NTT, GBLX, Verizon and others' pricing is
> many times higher than their NA and EU pricing.  In most cases, it's
> 10 or more times higher.
> 
> Additionally, some of the networks seem to market their network
> based on their reach into the US, rather than their reach into actual
> users in Asia, which is what we're looking for.
> 
> So my question is, what are non-APAC-based networks doing as they 
> expand into Asia for transit beyond peering with whomever will peer 
> with them to get close to actual users in Asia?
> 
> Are people using regional carriers?  Are people just paying the 
> "crazy" (compared to US pricing) bandwidth costs?  Are people doing 
> peering-only setups out there?  Any help would be useful --
> hopefully this is on-topic for NANOG, which I think it is, since I'm
> curious how NA operators deal with these challenges as they expand
> into APAC.
> 
> I'm happy to summarize responses later if there is interest.
> 
> Thanks, David
> 
> 