• Australian operator invests in Japan-US route
• Buys a large amount of capacity on NCP
• Says demand for international capacity has doubled over two years

Telstra claims to have boosted its subsea network capabilities with the acquisition of a big chunk of new capacity and an investment in a separate system...but its announcement on the matter is light on detail. Extremely light.

The Australian incumbent has made what is describes as "its first large capacity purchase" on the New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable and has committed "further investment" to the Google-backed FASTER cable system.

What we know, is that the two items will strengthen Telstra's Japan-U.S. route. What we don't know, is how much capacity it has acquired, how much it has invested in FASTER, or indeed anything else about the transactions. We do, however, have copious amounts of similarly light information on other recent Telstra cable deals (see below).

The operator needs to meet the ever-increasing demand for international capacity, driven by the usual suspects: cloud computing and video streaming. It says capacity demand on its international network has almost doubled to more than 200Tb over the past two years.

By way of background on the most recent announcement, the NCP cable went live in May last year, according to Flexential, whose Brookwood data centre in Oregon is the system's US termination point. The cable, which can provide up to 80 terabits per second of capacity, also lands in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and was built by Microsoft in partnership with China's three main telcos, KT, Chunghwa Telecom and Softbank. The FASTER system has been up and running since mid-2016.

As of last summer, Telstra's subsea cable assets form part of its InfraCo business, which incorporates all of the telco's fixed assets, its wholesale operations and its relationship with NBN. On a pro forma basis, InfraCo generated A$5.3 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year to the end of June, or around 20% of group turnover.

Full press release below

Telstra adds capacity to subsea cable network – the largest in Asia Pacific

Telstra today announced the addition of substantial capacity to its subsea cable infrastructure with its first large capacity purchase on the new-generation New Cross Pacific (NCP) cable, and a further investment in the Faster cable.

These investments strengthen Telstra’s Japan to the US route and confirm Telstra’s subsea cable network as the largest in the Asia Pacific.

Telstra Enterprise Group Executive Michael Ebeid said Telstra’s investments were part of a long term strategy to capture data demand across Asia and the Pacific.

“Building on the capacity, resiliency and the footprint of our already vast subsea network is a key part of our international growth strategy,” Mr Ebeid said.

“Following Telstra’s purchase of Pacnet in 2015, we have strategically invested in additional capacity and infrastructure to meet the increasing demand for data right across the Asia Pacific region, carefully mapping our international paths and investment.”

In December, Telstra entered into agreed terms to purchase a 25 per cent stake in Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN). Subject to definitive agreements and regulatory approvals, the agreement includes capacity on the existing Southern Cross network and new Southern Cross NEXT subsea cable - set to become the lowest latency path from Australia to the US.

Telstra has also boosted its Asia to US operations over the last 12 months, with a half fibre pair investment in the Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable and a 6Tb capacity purchase in the Pacific Light Cable Networks (PLCN) cable, both due to be completed in 2020.

These new-builds complement Telstra’s major half fibre pair investment in the INDIGO cable system from South East Asia to Australia, which has reached a major milestone with the completion of the 4,600km Indigo West cable lay from Singapore to Perth just before Christmas.

Today, Telstra’s subsea cable network reaches more than 400,000km – enough to circle the world almost 10 times.

Once completed, Telstra’s investments in SCCN, HKA, PLCN and INDIGO, will grow Telstra’s subsea cable network ownership by more than 25Tb.

“Capacity demand on our international network has almost doubled over the past two years to over 200Tb, driven by the explosion of cloud computing, video streaming and e-commerce,” Mr Ebeid said.

“As the Asia Pacific’s economy grows, so do we. We have increased our capacity to meet the growing data requirements of our customers now and into the future with our investments in capacity and path diversity throughout Asia Pacific.

“Increased connectivity is also about helping Telstra’s domestic, international business, international carrier and Government customers expand globally, particularly throughout Asia Pacific.”

For a third consecutive year, Telstra received the highest product scores for High Capacity Network and Low Latency Network in the Gartner Critical Capabilities 2018 report for Network Services, Asia Pacific.