Arctic Fibre lobbying telcos, governments, to sign onto Arctic fibre link

Arctic Fibre Inc. is asking Canadian telecos and government agencies to commit to using its proposed fibre backbone network for Internet services across Canada’s northern territories instead of satellite. On July 1, the Toronto-area startup launched an “open access season” throughout which it is encouraging Canadian carriers and government agencies to “request specific bandwidth” on its proposed fibre network, which will connect Tokyo, Japan to New York City and London, England via Canada’s northern lands and waters. That network, which will have the ability to move a total of 32 terabits of data every second, will reserve 40 Gbps of that capacity for domestic Internet backbone use across parts of the Canadian Arctic, bringing “virtually unlimited bandwidth” to 52 per cent of Nunavut’s population, and to parts of Labrador, Northern Quebec, and the Northwest Territories, Doug Cunningham, president of Arctic Fibre, said in a phone interview. He said it will offer enough leftover capacity to support government operations and other domestic backbone demand. The network will offer similar Internet backbone and backhaul services traditionally carried out over satellite connections in the North, but for approximately one-eighth of the cost, Cunningham said. “ enough to handle 1.6 billion simultaneous phone calls, or 3.6 million simultaneous broadcast-quality television signals,” Cunningham said of the network’s 32 terabit total capacity. “Our backbone will hit 52 per cent of population and will provide them seven or eight times the bandwidth for the same buck,” he said. Cunningham said the main backbone network will originate in Bude, U.K., and will run along the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean to a landing point off the south tip of Baffin Island, Nu. From there, he said, the network will connect with a second fibre line that runs south, towards Clarenville, NL, and north past Iqaluit, Nu. That line will connect directly to northern communities in Cape Dorset, Gjoa Haven and Cambridge Bay, Nu., and will also connect to dozens of nearby communities through secondary “spur” networks, Cunningham said. The main backbone line will continue northeast around the north slopes of Alaska, through the South Pacific Ocean, and will end at a base station in Murayama, Japan, he added. Cunningham said about a dozen Asian and European carriers have expressed an interest in accessing his company’s proposed fibre network, which he said would connect Japan and the U.K. with a round trip latency of 168 milliseconds. He said the European and Asian carriers are attracted to the fibre network because its low-latency connection wouldn’t go through California—where U.S. authorities can access the content of data packets transmitted over the Internet—or through the South China Sea or Suez Canal—where wired connections are frequently subjected to physical breaks. Cunningham said international carriers interested in using the link will subsidize the cost of laying more than 15,000 kilometres of fibre and will allow the company to charge lower rates to domestic carriers and government agencies connected to the network. Rates will start at $473 per month per megabit per second of capacity in the network’s first year of operation—projected to start in November, 2014—and may fall as low as $137 by the fifth year of operation, a document posted on the company’s website said. “Without the Asian carriers in particular, this wouldn’t make sense, because this is a $620 million to $640 million project,” Cunningham said. Cunningham said Arctic Fibre has been in talks with a trio of international companies that are capable of building the fibre network, and will issue a formal request for proposals on August 15. Once the network is complete, he said Arctic Fibre will be “a carrier’s carrier” in Canada’s North that offers backhaul and transport capacity to mobile carriers and Internet service providers (ISPs), as opposed to offering those services itself. Cunningham said the company, over the past nine months, has discussed use of the network with Canadian carriers such as Ice Wireless, BCE Inc. and its northern subsidiary, NorthwesTel Inc., as well as SSi Micro Ltd.’s Nunavut-based ISP, Qiniq. “We have sufficient, indicated demand from international carriers and content providers to make this happen,” Cunningham said. “That is assuming, of course, on the Canadian side, enough domestic traffic to cover that off on a utility-type basis.” He said the federal government could use the network to more cheaply and efficiently transmit data to and from its northern research stations, which is now done using satellite. This could allow researchers and other government officials to use more bandwidth-intense applications that aren't available right now due to the lower latency of satellite Internet, he said. “Right now, what we’re doing is asking the government just to commit to move their existing traffic from their satellite feed over to fibre,” Cunningham said. Paul Bush, vice-president of North American business development for northern satellite operator Telesat, said in an interview that his company has the necessary equipment in place to increase northern bandwidth capacity and provide backbone services to smaller, northern communities that do not currently have Internet or mobile services. Northern service providers have not yet asked the company for the bandwidth necessary to operate in those smaller communities—which mostly have populations of 500 people or less—because they can’t find an economic model that will allow them to do so, he said. “We have 15 transponders available that we built on this generation of satellites and we can light them up today,” he said of the unused equipment his company now has in place that could provide an extra 2 Gbps of bandwidth capacity for northern users. “We’ll commit to investing $40 million of our own money to do that if the government commits to a long-term contract,” he said. C.J. Prudham, chief legal officer at Xplornet Communications Inc., said in an emailed statement that the company doubts that a northern fibre network would be economically viable. “Over the years we have seen proposals for running wire to Canada’s North come and go. The ‘wired’ proposals have been uneconomical because of the tremendous costs involved in deploying cable to and across Canada’s North,” Prudham said. “Even if wire could be deployed to Canada’s North, that still does not address the issue of getting a high-speed signal to individual homes and businesses scattered over a vast land-mass.” Bush questioned whether Arctic Fibre could maintain its proposed intercontinental connection despite an “extremely harsh and unpredictable” Arctic environment. He said the Nunavut territorial government has experienced frequent problems with a patchwork of fibre networks it installed to help connect buildings in some communities, and suggested those problems would be magnified for underwater portions of the proposed network, which would be buried under a meter or more of ice for much of the year. “Lets say you put fibre down in the July 15 to August 22 build period, what happens in the winter when it fails? How are you going to repair that?” he said. “Can you really fix it in the period of time when the ice coverage is over?” Cunningham said he is not concerned about breaks occurring in fibre connections along the Arctic Ocean floor. He said the underwater aspects of the company’s line will be buried in sand within minutes of being laid down and will be protected from underwater elements. Cunningham said Canadian carriers have until Aug. 31 to reserve dedicated capacity on the new network, which the company will aim to bring online by Nov. 1, 2014. “Carriers which do not participate in the process will not be able to procure access on the network before January 1, 2018 and will not benefit from the economies of scale generated by increased throughput,” the company said in a release July 17. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

Arctic Fibre lobbying telcos, governments, to sign onto Arctic fibre link

News | July 30, 2012

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Arctic Fibre lobbying telcos, governments, to sign onto Arctic fibre link

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