Telstra International Americas President and CEO Will Hughs’ Thoughts on Growth

Telstra International is a global provider of managed networked solutions with unrivalled experience in Asia, EMEA, Australia and the Americas. It is a division of the Australia-based, telecommunications and media services company, Telstra Corporation Limited and owns one of the most technologically advanced IP backbone networks in the world.

Telecom Review recently met with Will Hughs, President and CEO for Telstra International Americas, and Nathan Bell, Telstra International Director of Global Products and Marketing to give our readers a good insight into Telstra International’s current and future plans.

Reach Assets

Telstra has been in the REACH partnership with another carrier to jointly own submarine cable and other facilities in the Asia

Pacific region. That venture was recently diminished and most of the assets have been distributed to the partners. Telstra completed the restructure of the Reach joint venture last year, which provided an expanded platform in the Asia Pacific region, including direct ownership of more undersea cable assets, an international PSTN voice capability, additional Points-of-Presence (PoPs) and satellite services and associated base stations that reach over two thirds of the Earth’s surface. This resulted in increased control over the end-to-end service delivery platform, allowing its enterprise and global service provider customers to experience enhanced customer service, improved service management and delivery, and more competitive market positioning.

This restructuring afforded Telstra International the opportunity to address a changing market and key in on emerging IP opportunities. They can now leverage their “new” robust IP network to serve emerging OTT opportunities in the Asia Pacific region. They can now key on their traditional service provider and enterprise markets that cover the US-Hong Kong-Singapore-Australia markets, and all other points associated with the Asia Pacific region. As Will noted, “We understand the Asia Pacific region. We have a great advantage in that this region is our knowledge base and that is why we are successful”. He further noted, “We will continue to focus on the “Triple C” product set, Cloud, Content and CDN, and the fact that we are an Asia Pacific specialist is where we will focus.”

“Asia Pacific is a key region in the global economy and for our customers, the ability to deliver scalable, reliable and cost efficient solutions to support their changing business requirements is essential,” Nathan Bell said. “Telstra International operates one of the largest and most diverse networks in Asia Pacific and we continue to invest in this network to support our customers as they face these increasing pressures.”

New Licenses

Telstra International recently secured new operating licenses in Singapore, and Japan, allowing it to own infrastructure facilities and be directly responsible for services delivered to customers locally in both countries. The announcement follows the recent award of three licenses to provide customers in India with international long-distance telecommunications and ISP services.

In Singapore, Telstra has secured the Facilities Based Operator (FBO) license offered by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) to own and operate telecommunications infrastructure such as voice and data networks, systems and facilities locally. It will also enable Telstra to build the local backbone required to support its plans for new cable submarine capacity to Singapore.

In Japan, Telstra Japan K.K. has been approved by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (the “MIC”) for the Registration Type license. The license allows Telstra to own and operate large scale telecoms circuits and facilities in multiple cities and prefectures in Japan, along with products and services delivered over those facilities and networks.

The recent award of licenses in India will see Telstra begin with services in seven cities - Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune - offering customers a resilient, cost effective, flexible network that is tailored to suit individual business needs within the next six months. Mumbai and Chennai will be Telstra’s Indian international gateways connecting into its world-class international backbone network, providing customers with direct routes into networks in Europe and Asia.

New DDoS Product

Telstra International recently launched its Global Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection solution. This new service provides added protection to multinational customers’ Internet-facing infrastructure against a wide range of DDoS attacks.

The service offers ‘in the cloud’ protection and mitigation of DDoS attack traffic, averting congestion of customer Internet connections and protecting customer web infrastructure, while legitimate, clean traffic is delivered to the customer.Nathan Bell said, “most global organizations today are reliant on constant online availability and Telstra International’s Global DDoS Protection solution helps businesses to avoid disruption and mitigate unexpected costs through a highly resilient protection service.”

“DDoS attacks have increased tenfold since 2005. As they have also become increasingly targeted, security has rapidly become a boardroom issue”, said Mr Bell. “A cloud based DDoS service is now among the best ways to protect your Internet facing web sites against malicious attacks and Telstra can integrate these seamlessly with customers’ IT systems, with expert support and experience close at hand.”

The service makes it easy and cost-effective for the customer to implement DDoS protection and is capable of mitigating the latest DDoS threats, with Telstra’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) systems and staff offering around-the-clock 24/7 monitoring, extensive analysis and highly effective mitigation and traffic cleaning through global cleaning centers. It also offers Telstra customers near real-time visibility to traffic and service status information via a web-based reporting portal.

Ethernet Offerings

Telstra International recently extended the global reach of its Ethernet Private Line (EPL) offering with the launch of a ‘One-Stop-Shop’ (OSS) Ethernet service option and the release of its Ethernet half circuits. The comprehensive OSS service option allows Telstra customers to benefit from a single point of contact for ordering, delivery, billing and support for Ethernet Private Line services, with end-to- end support and diagnostics provided by Telstra’s intelligent Network Interface Devices (NIDs).

Alternatively, Telstra’s Ethernet half circuits allow customers to buy a half circuit on the Telstra network and another on a partner network, to build a bespoke dedicated bandwidth Ethernet solution themselves.

Telstra is seeing increasing demand from customers who want to connect their data centers and benefit from the scalability and privacy of EPL services. By offering a comprehensive OSS Ethernet service combined with bilateral half circuits, Telstra is now able to leverage its global network of Ethernet provider partners in countries where it does not currently hold a license to operate, extending the reach of Telstra’s Ethernet service into these locations to meet local demand.

Telstra International’s Bell said,” We have extensive experience in providing International Private Line (IPL) bilateral and half circuits. With about 100 partners and 70 OSS IPL arrangements already in place, we plan to roll out Ethernet through agreements with many additional partners in the near future. The availability of the new circuits based on Ethernet can now enable a greater number of global organizations to benefit from the dedicated bandwidth, scalable capacity and flexibility of the Telstra EPL service supported by Telstra NIDs.”

Data Centers

Several data centers were allocated to the owners with the restructuring of Reach. These centers are spread across the Asia Pacific region and present Telstra International with quite a few opportunities to address the changing telecom landscape. Asia will continue to drive growth in this world and Telstra is well placed to bring value to this growth.