Int’l Roundup: Softbank, AJC, BT

After yet another quick trip, my summer travels are now over at last. As we slide into the end of Summer, here’s a look at some news on the international front from the start of the week:

Japan will be Netflix’s first Asian market, and Softbank will be their partner. The global streaming phenomenon has teamed up with the Japanese networking giant to bring on demand video to the Japanese marketplace. Softbank will be signing up Netflix customers in its various retail outlets and pre-installing the app on its smartphones.  Netflix is also taking aim at China in 2016, a market that could prove to be its biggest challenge.

Out in the APAC region, Infinera says its gear has helped the Australia-Japan Cable system to rapidly reroute traffic after a subsea fault in waters four to five miles deep recently. The two worked together to move 400Gbps worth of traffic in minutes via Infinera’s instant bandwidth technology, utilizing a terrestrial route and two other subsea links on the ring also served by Infinera’s gear. A cable ship has been dispatched of course.

And the largest incumbent providers in the US were on the receiving end of a broadside from their British cousin. BT America’s Bas Burger says that the two ILECs are hurting competition by using their position to overcharge for special access. “For a western world country it is the worst I’ve seen. There is not sufficient regulation to create competition: almost all access is being provided by two companies and they have divided the country among themselves.” Say it ain’t so…  He is calling for regulatory action to ensure access at reasonable rates, something the UK already did to BT itself of course.

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Categories: Government Regulations · ILECs, PTTs · Undersea cables · Video