Australia's Telstra will introduce assured availability on two of Asia-Pacific's busiest subsea cable routes, Hong Kong to Singapore and Japan to Hong Kong.
The company announced its new Always On service guarantee at the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC) conference in Hawaii on Monday.
Telstra will use its significant APAC cable network to guarantee connectivity in the event of a cable cut or damage due to natural disasters. Telstra's subsea cable network accounts for up to 30% of active intra-regional capacity in Asia-Pacific.
Customers will be guaranteed connectivity for their subscribed bandwidth over one primary path and two protection paths through different cable systems along the same routes.
Telstra's executive director of global sales Ellie Sweeney said subsea cable damage can take weeks - or in extreme cases months - 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,” she said.
“Connectivity is vital to the modern economy, with many consumers and businesses now relying on being able to connect anywhere at any time. Meeting customers’ expectations can be difficult when it comes to international connectivity, with cables at risk of service disruptions due to cable cuts caused by boats, earthquakes and typhoons.”