John Linton We, finally, 'turned on' the new supplier's (NTT) IP transit late yesterday at the new PoP located at Equinix which adds a further 1.25 gbps to our total IP bringing it to over 9gbps. When the 'live testing' is completed the new bandwidth will provide the third set of transit paths to the US and Asia and complete the redundancy plans for our IP offerings (and just as importantly will provide a fourth Sydney PoP) for both business and residential users. The delays caused by one supplier having to divert "all" available engineering resources to repairing infrastructure damage caused by the Queensland floods are finally over. We will update the network diagram to reflect these additions 'shortly'. The current Exetel network is light years away from our initial single PoP with a few 'boxes' and one tiny IP link in January 2004.
The Exetel network now has four PoPs in Sydney, is soon to get second PoPs in Melbourne and Brisbane, PoPs in all other Australian State capitals plus the ACT and will shortly have a new PoP in Auckland followed by PoPs in Wellington, Chicago and the outskirts of London before the end of the year - as well as a 'PoP' in Colombo. These PoPs are linked by back hauls (in Australia) provided by NextGen which will shortly be duplicated by much larger back hauls from AAPT. With IP transit now provided by Optus (all Australian PoPs), Verizon and NTT (four different Sydney PoPs) the Exetel network is a highly functional and multiply redundant transit service. A large, continuous and continuing, investment for a company that only commenced in business seven years ago....and its almost flawless performance from day one is a great tribute to its designer and overall manager throughout that time.
We also moved a step closer to signing new leases for floor space in both North Sydney and Colombo. Subject to final approvals by Exetel's directors we will double the people housing capacity in North Sydney by renting a whole new floor and will add more than 30% to our SL people capacity in Columbo by renting the remaining space on the very large floor we already occupy. The North Sydney space will be needed as we will expand the Data Centre capacity on the floor we purchased almost three years ago and we already are at close to people capacity - doubling the current data centre space will make it impossible to house our current North Sydney based personnel - let alone the planned growth in people in North Sydney over the balance of 2011 and beyond.
We continue to quite significantly increase the rate of hiring additional people - mainly in Colombo, but also in North Sydney. Having only quite recently passed the 100 personnel 'mark' it will not be that long, assuming we continue to grow at the anticipated rates, that we will have more than 200 people employed in our 'start up' communications business - still insignificant in comparison to our competitors but a long, long way from where we started. However there are so many dependencies, not all within our direct control, for that to happen that it only serves as an indication that we are still on track to planned aspirations rather than having to contemplate a "strategic change of direction".....let's hope I'm not getting ahead of myself.
So much to do....... so little brain power left.
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