January 21st, and it’s the end of day three here at the annual Pacific Telecom Council (PTC) meeting.  It’s the quality, not the quantity is the consensus here.  Fedor Smith of Atlantic ACM observed a dip in attendance by about 30%, however, the quality and productivity of the meetings has been terrific.

Since this is a business conference, detailed meeting discussions are kept confidential.  However, the hunt for new business opportunities between telecom operators, service providers, content delivery networks, IP providers and voice service providers are taking root.  Commsday, the official news publication of PTC has been issuing a daily newsletter highlighting the ‘breaking news’ and commentary that their reporters have had with attendees.  Today’s news featured Hibernia Atlantic who announced this morning the launch of their ‘Amsterdam Leg,’ a new route between Amsterdam and Hibernia Atlantic’s 27 POPs in North America.  “This network offers a low latency express route that crosses the Atlantic and completely bypasses London’s common congested terrestrial fiber routes.  Latency on the new Amsterdam to Boston route is now 74 milliseconds making this the fastest available route.  It also offers the fastest route between Amsterdam and Dublin, Ireland,” according to Hibernia’s statement in the release.

In addition to Hibernia’s mention, Tiscali International Networks (TINet) was also featured.  Grahame Lynch, Publisher of CommsDay met with the US team at TINet  who promises ‘we won’t compete against you.’  With roots as a dial-up ISP in Sardinia, Itlay, TINet has grown to become one of the most connected, wholesale only, IP/MPLS global networks.  According to Ivo Pascucci, Sales Director for TINet in the US, the company has around 500 carrier and network customers globally.  Grahame Lynch wrote that the company is rather lean and boasts both 100 Pops and 100 staff  ‘an unprecedented one-to-one ratio,’ as printed in Commsday.  Ivo Pascucci went on to share with Commsday that one of their selling points is the company’s use of multiple sources of capacity – which differs from rivals who tend to pack all of their traffic onto one wholly owned network.

It’s been exciting and both very interesting to meet with the diverse network and service providers that are the core to our industry.  One that is among the most important industries, since it connects the world and provides everyone, everywhere, an opportunity to communicate more efficiently.