While Cable & Wireless Plc is preparing to offer a seamless worldwide Internet access service for travellers, Kansas City, Missouri-based Sprint Corp, as reported briefly is attempting to overcome the increasing congestion of the Internet by reducing the amount of traffic that has to cross the US, expanding its Internet service via 10 new Internet centres in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, London, Paris, Stockholm, Moscow, St Petersburg, Amman and Johannesburg. According to the company, the new international Internet service hubs will support the 28 countries outside the US where Sprint currently offers high-speed local access to the Internet. It says the aim is to enable corporate customers, governments and international carriers in Asia and Europe to benefit from local access, hubbing, diverse routing and minimised congestion for their Internet traffic. Concentration of global Internet traffic in and through the US has led to a situation in which Internet traffic has become increasingly congested – it has become a little like having all the world’s air traffic routed exclusively via New York’s JFK airport in the US, said William Blessing, vice-president of strategic development and planning for Sprint International, Sprint’s global telecommunications subsidiary.
Cyber destination
Conversely, says the firm, Sprint users will now be able to ‘surf the Net’ via local access and be serviced through the regional Internet centre closest to their cyber destination. Sprint’s Internet customers in Hong Kong wishing to access Web sites in London and Japan will now be able to avoid the US Internet, as their traffic is routed via Global SprintLink [Sprint’s global Internet service], to Sprint’s London and Tokyo Internet centres, said Braham Singh, managing director of ASEAN and Hong Kong Operations for Sprint International. The new Internet centres carry traffic at a variety of speeds up to 2Mbps and will expand to 34Mbps as future traffic demands, says the firm, which claims to carry more than half of the world’s international Internet communications to and from the US.
