Deregulation and market globalization have hastened the urgency for Asia Pacific to embrace IP and broadband technologies and accompanying e-applications such as video streaming and video conferencing. These technologies and other online ‘conveniences’ require much bandwidth, creating an unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific region. Further supporting this growth, competition and technical advances in developed countries continue to drive down the cost of telecoms services, propelling economic prosperity. Meanwhile, the regional governments are busy at work to deregulate their telecommunications sector, in order to promote their countries to world-class standards and reap the benefits of globalization. This trend will continue in Asia’s regulatory landscape as: l Governmental push for infocomm technology infrastructure investments to support economic growth (eg. Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea) l Reduction in government shareholdings in incumbent telcos as these are usually government owned and operated
THE WINDS OF CHANGE in the Bandwidth Market By Tsunekazu Matsudaira, CEO of C2C Pte Ltd 28
Invite participation of foreign companies and lower the foreign investment limits l Increased demand for backhaul and carrier hotel facilities (See Annex I) The rapid market liberalization and privatization have led to the proliferation of new service providers to introduce a host of new services and offerings to the marketplace, causing market share erosion to existing incumbent carrier. This had created complications in the traditional correspondent environment, making it difficult to forecast bilateral traffic growth over a multi-year planning horizon. Coupled with the upheavals in the current market with some failed carriers and providers bailing out of the bandwidth industry, many investors and supporters are losing confidence. However, this is where the surviving bandwidth providers will strengthen their market position. l
Changing Bandwidth Demand Pattern What has happened over the last 12 months was nothing short of a total meltdown of the