Telstra is combining three undersea cable systems to ensure its customers throughout Asia are not left stranded without reliable internet connections due to damage caused by natural disasters and ships.
Natural disasters, such as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, typhoons around Taiwan and the Philippines, can and have damaged undersea fibre-optic cables, which carry 97 per cent of the world's phone and internet traffic.
Telstra director of emerging markets Paul Abfalter told The Australian Financial Review the new 'Always On' guarantee, which the telecommunications provider will announce on Monday at the Pacific Telecommunications Council conference in Hawaii, will allow its customers who need to use some of Asia's busiest routes, such as Hong Kong to Singapore and Japan to Hong Kong, a cheaper alternative to paying for two systems, one as primary and the other as a back-up.
"If you're a Google, Netflix, Facebook, a carrier or a low-latency financial services provider, you need your service up 24/7," Mr Abfalter said.
Damage to undersea cables can have an impact on internet connections, upload and download speeds and latency that can affect transactions, high-frequency trading, real-time communications and video games among others.
For example, Australian internet users in December 2014 were hit with slow connections after damage to a cable between Perth and Singapore, which was thought to be caused by an earthquake or a ship's anchor. Damage to an undersea cable in the Arabian Sea in 2005 severed almost all communication in and out of Pakistan.
"We operate three different cable systems intra-Asia and we have the largest network, and the technology is getting to the point where we'll automatically be able to route customers [in the event of cable damage]," Mr Abfalter said.
"Initially we'll do that manually, it will only take four to eight hours, for the other operators it will take them weeks to get a ship out to fix the cable. In six to 12 months' time ... we'll be able to automatically route."
Demand for data in Asia is growing and undersea cables act as the arteries keeping the digital world connected. Telstra will be hoping that it can entice new customers and cement old ones with the guarantee, meaning they would not need to purchase from multiple vendors and potentially pay for unused capacity.
Telstra's $857 million acquisition of Pacnet in 2014 gave the telco a major boost in the Asia region. Two of the three systems it is combining to offer its new 'Always On' guarantee came from that acquisition, while the final system was a legacy network Telstra owned.
Telstra executive director of global sales Ellie Sweeney said the telco's undersea network accounted for up to 30 per cent of intra-regional capacity in the Asia Pacific.
"Subsea cable damage can take weeks – or even months in extreme cases – to fix. With Telstra's 'Always On' service guarantee, customers will be rerouted to a protection path within a matter of hours initially, and with automation we expect to bring this down to a few minutes in the future," Ms Sweeney said.
"The strength and capacity of our network means customers can be assured that all of their subscribed bandwidth – whether it is 10GB (gigabyte) or 1TB (terabyte) – can be supported on the same route in the event of a single or multiple outages on the primary path."
