- 1. It was recently announced that Telia Carrier will be deploying its network across the global EdgeConneX portfolio. What prompted this great partnership and how is it unique?
At Telia Carrier, we continue to extend our global Internet backbone, AS1299 into additional edge markets. For us to do this successfully, we need strong, reliable partners, and to quote one of our Carrier Declarations, we need to ‘Choose Your Allies Carefully’. EdgeConneX is a trusted infrastructure partner that we can count on in these markets to provide consistent, secure and high reliability facilities with compelling service quality. As we both grow our presence into new markets it is a perfect opportunity to build on our strong relationship.
- 2. EdgeConneX is focused on improving performance at the Edge via their Edge Data Centers. Can you tell us about how Telia Carrier plays a key role in making this a reality?
Telia Carrier sees growing demand for services at the edge from regional broadband and mobile operators, as well as education and research networks. Working with the EdgeConneX ecosystem, Telia Carrier’s IP, transmission and mobile data service suite enables direct access for our large global base of content providers to these regional end users. Where Cloud applications, gaming (including augmented and virtual reality), video streaming, and evolving mobility and IoT applications are served at the edge, the overall quality of experience is optimized.
- 3. What are a few of your forecasted network trends for 2018? And what are a few of the short and mid-term technology requirements for Telia Carrier that are associated?
Essentially it boils down to size, cost and inherent network layer intelligence. The evolution of the underlying optical network layer is undoubtedly the main driver of our industry and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, we can’t increase the speed of light, but we can make it easier and more cost-effective to transmit. The footprint of DWDM gear is constantly getting smaller and it is now possible to deploy high capacity systems at multiple sites, with minimal space and power. At the same time, hardware costs in general are falling and the emergence of open line/whitebox solutions such as Facebook’s Voyager will further increase both vendor competiveness and operational efficiency. As the combined efficiency of both long haul and metro transport is enhanced, it will be easier for datacenters to operate closer to the edge and deliver the benefits to end-users and businesses of increased redundancy, lower latency and strong global connectivity.
- 4. How many unique networks are available across the Telia Carrier backbone? And how much traffic are you seeing across your network?
Our global Internet backbone, AS1299 is currently ranked by Dyn as the #1 backbone network globally and as holds the #1 position in 5 continental backbone rankings as well (North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania).
During the past two decades, our global backbone has grown organically, something which is fairly unique for our industry. Today, we have more than 1500 directly AS customers, including many of the world’s most important content and ISP/operator networks. Our directly connected IP customers account for more than half of global Internet table prefixes.
In terms of traffic, we carry more than 3.5 exabytes of global Internet backbone traffic on our network every month.