New Gigabit Ethernet service to address growing demand for scalable, cost efficient bandwidth subscriptions between Australia and the U.S.

San Francisco, USA; Tokyo, Japan, Sydney Australia: 26 August 2009 - To meet the continually growing demand from bandwidth-hungry applications such as high-definition video, Australia Japan Cable (AJC), operator of the AJC cable system between Japan and Australia, and Pacific Crossing Limited (PCL), the operator of the lowest latency network across the Pacific, PC-1, have announced the launch of their Gigabit Ethernet Service for carrier, enterprise, and ISP customers looking for scalable, flexible connectivity options between Australia and North America.

Both companies had announced Gigabit Ethernet offerings on their own networks earlier in the year.  "Testing together with AJC was hugely successful and proved our joint capability to deliver an Ethernet service that the industry has come to expect," said Seth Davis, PCL CTO.  "Partnering together, AJC and PCL can offer standard 1Gigabit and 10Gigabit interfaces together with the flexibility of scalable capacity from 150Mbs (STM1) up to the full size of the port interface." 

"The expansion of our Ethernet service to include our partnership with PCL and deliver services all the way to the US is an evolutionary step in our product strategy," said Chris Kessikidis, AJC's Commercial Director.  "Additionally we have established relationships with Australian backhaul providers enabling the ability to deliver these services all the way to the customer's premise." 

"For customers our Gigabit offering with AJC provides tremendous flexibility," said John Garrett, PCL Global Head of Sales.  "Customers can have the service installed and then increase capacity up to the port speed (1Gb or 10Gb) overtime without any necessary upgrades to equipment or local access.   The money and time saved and the productivity gained by not having to wait for new equipment and install it, or wait for upgrades to local access is huge." 

Testing of the Gigabit service on the AJC and PC1 networks confirmed transmission performance up to the full rate and for frames up to a jumbo size of 9224 bytes.

"While international submarine networks, including AJC, have historically provided connectivity using Protected and Unprotected SDH capacity, there has been a clear trend  to migrate Ethernet connectivity from local to national to international," said Phillip Murphy, AJC's Head of Engineering.  "We are pleased to be working with PCL to provide this solution to the marketplace."

ENDS.

Partnership leverages strong subsea cable assets of both companies to provide leading edge solutions to business and wholesale customers

Australia Japan Cable and Bharti Airtel announced today a partnership agreement to interconnect their current and future networks in Guam. This landmark agreement will allow both parties to offer services from a number of locations including Singapore and the USA West Coast to Australia. This paves the way to offering new and alternative routes to existing customers and future prospects. This innovative agreement will utilize the undersea cable assets of Bharti Airtel and AJC. Bharti Airtel will be utilizing its assets on the upcoming AAG "Asia America Gateway" Cable System and AJC will use its assets on its Australia Japan Cable System. The cable systems will be connected in Guam. AJC will provide capacity between Australia and Guam, whilst still offering connectivity to Japan. Bharti Airtel will be provisioning services between Guam and major hubs like Singapore, Japan and the US. The joint network is expected to carry commercial traffic by Q2 FY 08-09. "With the demand for connectivity to and from Australia growing multifold, a partnership with an established carrier like AJC is a natural fit with our endeavour of developing innovative business solutions that enhance our global network capabilities. Our partnership with AJC, coupled with our investments in AAG will ensure flexible options for connectivity to Australia from anywhere in the world, for business and wholesale customers. This initiative is part of Bharti Airtel's investments of over Rs.1500 crore in the last two years, in existing and upcoming cable routes to create one of the most robust and diverse communications networks in the world," noted David Nishball, President Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel "AJC has a longstanding reputation for service excellence on the north south route between Australia and Japan. For some time we have sought to expand our footprint and provide our customers with diversified options to broaden and protect their routes. In this partnership with Bharti Airtel we believe we have secured a seamless low latency transaction to the USA as well as diverse and secure options into India and multiple Asian destinations for our customers," said Robin Russell, CEO of AJC. This will offer a completely new route to customers which avoids the areas most prone to seismic activity off the Taiwan region, which have previously resulted in damage to undersea cables and network disruptions, thus offering customers a highly resilient and shorter route.

About AJC

Australia-Japan Cable is a submarine cable directly connecting Australia and Japan, via Guam. The AJC network also provides access to the high capacity, high volume, low unit cost Trans Pacific and intra Asia cables via Guam and Japan to enable onward connectivity. The AJC Ready For Service date was achieved in December 2001. AJC is

a 12,700km optical fibre ring cable network with Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology providing 10Gbit/s wavelengths with a design capacity of up to 64 waves per fibre pair. SDH capacity is provided including automatic network protection with ring and span switching in accordance with ITU-T Rec. G.841 MS SPRING in the event of terminal equipment or cable or repeater faults. In April 2008 the network was upgraded and equipped from its original 80Gbit/s to 240Gbit/s. The current capability of AJC is over 1000Bit/s enabling further upgrades as required. A collapsed ring configuration is used where the fibre pairs share a common sheath on a historically safe route between branching units in 4000m water depth where separate landings are made in each of Australia, Guam and Japan. AJC enables diverse landing points, Paddington and Oxford falls in Australia, Tanguisson and Tumon Bay in Guam and Shima and Maruyama in Japan, then Asia and North America via onward connectivity. Carriers can also use AJC as a diverse cable system to other cables connecting in all landing point locations. AJC offers a range of products that Capacity Users can suit to their individual network requirements. These range from Protected SDH, FlexProtect, Direct Wavelength Access and Ethernet Services. For more information, visit

.ajcable.com

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"In recent months we've seen some Northern Hemisphere submarine networks to the US embrace Ethernet technology. What it means for customers to and from Australia using AJC is an end to end scalable connection which aligns to capacity purchase strategies such as just in time capacity requirements," said Chris Kessikidis, AJC's Commercial Director.

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