Exactly two years after the historic commissioning of Bhutan's first international Internet link to London through optical fiber on 45 Mbps capacity with Reliance Globalcom, Bhutan Telecom has established an entirely new fiber circuit and replaced this 45 Mbps link with an increased capacity of 155 Mbps. This alone is a significant 110 Mbps increase and has been carried out as the inbound Internet traffic to Bhutan was nearing congestion. In order to provide a full network diversity and redundancy to achieve high reliability, the new fiber circuit is leased through Bharti Airtel. Bhutan Telecom also has the other optical fiber for international Internet link of 45 Mbps capacity connecting to Hongkong which is planned for an upgrade within January 2010 to the same capacity to 155 Mbps.
Bhutan Telecom has Point of Presence (PoP) at both these locations – London and Hongkong where they peer with bigger global Internet Service Providers. They peer with the world's largest Internet Exchange, London Internet Exchange (LINX) in London while in Hongkong peering is set up at Hongkong Internet Exchange (HKIX). Peering is done to exchange Internet traffic on mutual agreement between the parties for free of cost. For example, Bhutan Telecom peers with Google both at LINX and HKIX thereby making Google search faster as the access to Google is accomplished directly.
In addition to the fiber circuits, Bhutan Telecom has 20 Mbps bandwidth of satellite connectivities for international Internet links connecting at 10 Mbps each to UK and USA. While these satellite links are used actively, they serve mainly as backup in case the fiber circuits go down. With Bhutan Telecom set to provide in total of 330 Mbps bandwidth for international Internet links – that is increase by additional 220 Mbps, and considering the size of population and the Internet users of the country, Bhutan will potentially have one the world's highest international Internet bandwidth per inhabitant and Internet user.
This increased capacity should enable wider range of opportunities in ICT development and business. Bhutan Telecom's Internet users should begin experiencing faster Internet access and those watching or downloading videos online should particularly be able to do so with lesser jitter and smoother viewing. To utilize the available high capacity bandwidth on international Internet links, Bhutan Telecom will continue to roll out and expand coverage of broadband Internet and other high-speed Internet access across the country with emphasis on the remote areas wherever feasible.
Bhutan Telecom is confident that these bandwidth upgrades should facilitate promotions of ICT and attract international IT-related and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies who are currently considering Bhutan a possible destination. Bhutan Telecom would like to wish our valuable customers fast and enjoyable surfing of the net.