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In Asia, Telecom Boom Continues
Asia, or at least a large part of it is going through a telecom boom. Yesterday, Dave Burstein reported in DSL Prime that “China will soon pass the U.S. as the country with the most broadband users, probably mid-2007 at 55M-60M.” And that’s with 12% market penetration. Taiwan’s capital, Tapei went fully wireless yesterday.
On the backhaul side of the business, two Indian state-owned telecommunication companies, BSNL and MTNL have set up a joint venture called Millennium Telecom, a $400 million project to build a “submarine cable system connecting India to Singapore and Malaysia, and to West Asia, the US and Europe.” The news comes close on the heels of the launch of Falcon, a 2.56TB submarine cable system that connects Mumbai with other countries in the Middle East and is part of the FLAG global network.
These seemingly unrelated news bits are part of a larger theme: an ongoing telecom buildout in Asia where broadband and other modern telecom technologies are being deployed as demand explodes.
Now if only Verizon can take inspiration from this story and lay the Fiber to bring FISO to Hoboken, NJ…
BTW: Not sure if you noticed or wrote about this – India has held the distinction of being the country with the cheapest cell phone call charges.
There is an oblique reference to the same in this article: http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=36650&src=site-marq
I think that’s one of the reasons why the Asian economies are doing so well, as they are able to more readily upgrade their technologies than many of their US/European counterparts. After all, making dramatic changes to existing infrastructures is much harder for “developed” countries than simply putting in the “newest” technologies for developing countries…
I hope that made sense…it is a little late right now…