Pacnet increases network capacity by 50 percent

Telecommunications service provider Pacnet announced plans to add 3.6 terabit per second (Tbps) of capacity to its EAC-C2C subsea cable network.

According to a statement issued today, the upgrade to the EAC-C2C comes three months in advance of its upgrade schedule, and will be Pacnet's largest ever bandwidth upgrade, bringing in an additional 50 percent capacity.

Pacnet said in the statement that the global economic crisis has not affected the demand for intra-Asian submarine cable capacity. Citing TeleGeography Research figures, demand for intra-Asia capacity is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 48 percent between 2009 and 2015, it said.

Bill Barney, Pacnet chief executive officer said: "We are seeing bandwidth demand in the region fueled not only by the expanding broadband population in Asia, but also from the growing amount of digital content that is being generated from Asia."

Popularity of cloud computing and the demands from stock exchanges and financial institutions for redundancies and ultra-low latency connectivity computing will also drive the increase in lit capacity requirements, said Wilfred Kwan, chief technology officer of Pacnet.

"[Pacnet's] latest network upgrades, which are targeted for completion by early 2011, will focus on increasing capacity across key network routes which connect Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, countries that are host to some of Asia's largest enterprises and busiest stock exchanges," added Kwan.

Apart from upgrades to its submarine cable network, Pacnet also plans to upgrade its terrestrial backhaul links between cable landing stations and its points of presence, delivering city-to-city high-bandwidth connectivity around the region.

According to the statement, Pacnet completed a phase of upgrades with 3.2 Tbps of capacity added to EAC-C2C earlier in April this year.