China Telecom, KT Plan New Low Latency Silk Road

Most traffic via Asia and Europe travels under the ocean despite the fact that you can walk from one to the other.  But the terrestrial efforts are gaining more ground, and this week we saw another pathway develop.  China Telecom Global (CTG) and JSC Kazakhtelecom (KT) have signed an agreement to cooperate on a low latency, high-capacity route across central Asia.

When in place, the new route across the “Transit Silk Road” is expected to offer latency of a mere 162ms between Hong Kong and Frankfurt, with KT able to self-provide the infrastructure for about half of the distance.  CTG and KT both see future collaboration down the road on other projects.

For CTG the deal is driven in part by the Chinese government’s Belt and Road initiative aimed at improving the country’s ties to central Asia and redeveloping trade routes into the region along ancient corridors.  It’s just that today’s trade is more in bits than in silk thread.  Last week we saw CITIC buy LINX with access from Europe into the Baltic countries and Russia, which is another piece of the same puzzle.  It may be centrally planned, but it’s not a bad idea by any means.

 

 

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Categories: Fiber Networks