​TPG commits to buckets of bandwidth

TPG believes the solution to ensuring that connectivity between cloud and end-users remains fluid as traffic grows is to increase bandwidth, something which the telco giant said it is committed to delivering more of going forward.

"We are trying to continue to push the barrier of connectivity by delivering a bucket load of bandwidth," said TPG head of product Nick Pachos during the AWS Summit in Sydney.

Pachos pointed out that there is evidence more bandwidth will be needed, given that its end user customers are already demanding storage space of 100GB and beyond, not only domestically but internationally because users want access to a cloud platform no matter where they are.

"The net amount of traffic will be massive and we need to make sure we can provide that bandwidth because customers can't wait six months," he said.

Citing recent research by Cisco, Pachos highlighted that by 2019, 80 percent of global datacentre traffic will come from cloud services and applications. He added that in 2014 there was 2.1 zettabytes (ZB) worth of data traffic going into cloud versus 1.3ZB going into traditional datacentres, and by 2019 traditional datacentre traffic will only grow by another 0.5ZB while cloud traffic is expected to lift four-fold.

"The amount of traffic traversing into cloud will be greater than the amount of data traversing in datacentres today. That poses a connectivity issue from a technology perspective," he said.

From a connectivity perspective, Pachos said TPG currently offers dark fibre and wave length products.

In September last year, TPG teamed up with Vodafone Australia as part of a AU$900 million, 15-year dark fibre deal to construct an additional 4,000 kilometeres of fibre to Vodafone's cell towers across the country, outlaying AU$300-400 million in capital expenditure.

TPG also took over dark fibre provider Pipe Network back in 2010, which gave the company access to an extensive dark fibre network across major Australian business centres in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Pachos added that while traffic will continue to accelerate, datacentre footprint will continue to shrink, pointing out that cloud computing is the primary driver of the trend.

"In the corporate space, internally enterprises are spending less and less on building datacentre environments, yet we see service providers are growing their investment significantly year-on-year until 2019 and beyond," he said.