WCA September 2013

2011 on the $400 million project, first announced in 2009. Jay Alabaster of the IDG News Service wrote that most of the investors are large telecom providers and mobile operators in the countries that were connected up. In addition to China Telecom and NEC, these include China Mobile, Hong Kong’s Donghwa Telecom, Globe (in the Philippines), SingTel, and TOT (in Thailand). Mr Alabaster pointed out some notable aspects of Google’s participation. Its share in the project could be used to link up three new Asian data centres and connect them to its US holdings. In September 2011, Google acquired 1.6 million square feet of land in Taiwan to construct a facility slated for completion this year. The American Internet-services giant said it had also acquired smaller plots in Hong Kong and Singapore with the intention of building data centres there, as well. The new bandwidth could be used to one day expand Google’s service provider business. In the US, over the last decade, the company purchased large amounts of “dark” (unused) fibre and recently launched fibre service in several towns, offering 1Gbps Internet as well as TV packages. Rapid decline in copper-based connections in Asia promotes the advance of FTTx-based services — the new ‘broadband darling’. Copper-based broadband connec- tions, while still the dominant method of broadband access across the globe, are in an accelerating decline, according to a recent report from Point Topic. That is not surprising news, according to Telecompetitor’s Bernie Arnason, especially in the US “where the two largest incumbent DSL providers, Verizon and AT&T, have been haemorrhaging millions of basic DSL subscribers” for the past couple of years. Point Topic had reported that copper-based broadband connec- tions declined for the first time in fourth-quarter 2012, with 415 thousand copper-based broadband subscribers lost.

According to France Télécom strategy chief Élie Girard, the French phone company is on the lookout for cable companies with which to cross-sell services, offering European users packages combining TV, mobile and Internet. The company sees an example in the relationship in the US between Verizon Wireless and the cable company Comcast Corp whereby the firms sell each other’s services under their own brand names. In an interview with Mr Girard at the French Open in Paris, in June, Amy Thomson of Bloomberg News learned that his company is seeking to expand into increasingly popular multiservice bundles – a strategy adopted by its competitors across Europe – without having to make expensive acquisitions. Romania and Belgium, where France Télécom offers only mobile service, are top venues for this type of relationship, Mr Girard said. “When you look at the addressable market, it’s shrinking by several points every year,” he told Ms Thomson. “You have this idea of trying to sign deals. Look at what Comcast and Verizon have done. One needed mobile. One needed fixed. So they cross-sold to each other.” France Télécom already offers bundled packages in France and credits this with helping it retain customers in the face of cheaper services, notably Free brand mobile from Iliad SA. Still, as a price war initiated by Iliad last year continues, France Télécom has pledged to cut costs to the customer. The latest financial results have been disappointing. First-quarter earnings, excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, fell nine per cent and sales dropped 5.9 per cent. The company cut its dividend last year and is currently intent on conserving cash. • Ms Thomson noted on Bloomberg.com (5 th June) that the CEO of Britain’s Vodafone Group, Vittorio Colao, also singles out the Comcast-Verizon partnership as a model for European carriers as they confront declining prices, weak economies and regulators who delay or reject acquisitions. Vodafone has network-sharing agreements with Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and Telefónica, of Spain. As reported in June by the GSM Association (GSMA) and cited by Ms Thomson, the average European consumer spent $38 per month in 2012 on mobile subscriptions, compared with $69 for a US counterpart. The mobile operators’ group also said that wireless phone bills in Europe have declined steadily since 2000, while carriers in the US have reversed that trend beginning in 2010. With the Comcast-Verizon partnership as a model, France Télécom mulls cross-selling deals with cable companies

The 5,530-mile Southeast Asia-Japan Cable (SJC) undersea fibre system goes live As reported by International Data Group (IDG), a 28tbps (terabits per second) undersea fibre cable system backed by a consortium including the American Internet-services giant Google, China Telecom, NEC and a host of local telecommunications companies, was opened on 27 th June. The 5,530-mile system connects China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore and Brunei with Japan.

An eventual link to Thailand could bring its total length to 6,000 miles. From Japan, according to Tokyo- based NEC, its main supplier, the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable (SJC) system links to existing trans-Pacific fibre that runs to the United States. NEC said the system provides the lowest-latency connection from Singapore to Los Angeles. The system is reported to consist of six fibre pairs that can carry the equivalent of 3 million HD video streams at the same time. Construction was started in April

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2013