Connectivity: bandwidth, an AS number, peering, and direct lines

Research note, October 27, 2026, Alexander Grabowski (B4L). Sources retrieved October 27, 2026; figures are cited and our estimates marked.

This note covers the bandwidth a newly built data center can get, what it takes to run an autonomous system of its own (an AS, the routing identity a network announces to the internet), where the nearest place to peer is, and what a direct line costs. B4L prepared the note as the consultant; the investor would build, own, and operate the network. Money is in THB, with USD in parentheses at 33 THB per USD, the B4L planning rate. AUD and SGD use assumed rates (21.45 THB per AUD and 25.4 per SGD, est.), because no exchange rate was fetched.

In short

• Bandwidth is easy to buy once fiber reaches the plot. Carriers sell ports of up to 100 Gbps, and EGAT sells wavelengths of 10 to 400 Gbps.[760][761] One fiber pair carries 25.6 to 30 Tbps (vendor figures).[762][763] BOI asks for at least 4 telecom systems and 60 Gbps combined.[389] The hard part, in our judgment, is getting two separate fiber routes into the plot.
• Registering its own AS number and addresses costs the investor little. Thailand has no national registry, so the investor joins APNIC directly (our reading).[764] Two AS numbers are free, and a /23 of IPv4 with a /32 of IPv6 costs AUD 500 once plus AUD 2,256 a year, about 59,000 THB in the first year (est. rate).[765][755] More IPv4 costs about USD 24 to 25 per address.[766]
• Selling connectivity needs a Type 1 license, and owning fiber needs a Type 3 license. Law firms read connectivity resold to tenants as Type 1, which since August 2026 needs no foreign-business permit, while fiber and gateways of one's own need Type 3 and Thai-majority ownership.[767][768]
• The nearest place to peer is Telehouse Bangkok, where all six established Thai exchanges meet.[756] Microsoft and Cloudflare have Thai exchange ports only at TH-IX; BKNIX adds Meta, Amazon, ByteDance, and UniNet.[769] Isan has no exchange, and BKNIX Chiang Mai, with 8 networks, serves the ITSC pilot.[770][771]
• CMU pays NT 1,596,457.54 THB including VAT for 12 months of at least 20 Gbps, 10 of them international, which is about 6,650 THB per Gbps a month (our arithmetic).[758][772] A 100G port at BKNIX costs 150,000 THB a month.[757]
• Dark fiber for a direct line is expensive. At 1,200 to 2,500 THB per core-km a month, one pair from Korat to Bangkok (about 250 km) costs about 0.6 to 1.25 million THB a month at list prices, and two routes cost double (our arithmetic).[773][774] Wavelength prices are not published.
• We estimate the budget at opening, with two 100G routes, two transit carriers, and peering in Bangkok, at 0.54 to 1.63 million THB (USD 16,000 to 50,000) a month plus 1.8 to 3.9 million THB once. At 2 MW it rises to 1.6 to 3.5 million THB a month.

How much bandwidth a new site can get

What is on sale

UIH sells transit from 100 Mbps to 100 Gbps, split into international (IIG, international internet gateway) and domestic (NIX) capacity.[760] OTARO lists fiber internet at 10, 100, and 400 Gbps, domestic only, with international capacity quoted separately.[775] EGAT's 2021 brochure offers DWDM wavelengths (a dedicated color of light on its fiber) of 10 to 400 Gbps at more than 50 substation access points, with service levels up to 99.99%, and the same across the borders to Malaysia, Laos, and Myanmar; its fiber runs in the earth wire of transmission lines (OPGW) over more than 20,000 km.[761]

Who owns the long-haul fiber

NT had 4 million fiber cores and 4,000 km of conduits in 2022,[776] and Symphony runs more than 32,000 km in 52 provinces.[777] Interlink has fiber on State Railway telegraph poles over 3,244.09 km, leased to October 18, 2042, and sells wavelengths and dark fiber; its report does not say which lines the 3,244 km cover.[778][779] SRT signed on April 21, 2025 for fiber of its own along all railway routes, and may lease it to private parties later.[780]

Capacity per fiber

Coherent's line system carries 32 wavelengths of 800G, 25.6 Tbps, on one pair, and Nokia lifts Symphony's MCT subsea cable to 30 Tbps per pair (vendor figures).[762][763] Once a pair is in, capacity grows by adding optics, with no new construction (our judgment).

What BOI asks

A promoted data center needs at least 4 systems to domestic and international telecom centers, at least 3 of them domestic at 10 Gbps or more, and at least 60 Gbps combined.[389] Cloud activity 8.2.2 also needs two ISO/IEC 27001 data centers in Thailand, linked at 10 Gbps or more with backup links of the same speed (see hosting and agent servers).[250]

Two separate routes into the plot

The real constraint is the route. What matters is whether two independent routes, on separate rights of way rather than two cables in one trench, reach the parcel, and who builds the last kilometers. INET's Bangkok and Saraburi sites are joined by multiple redundant dark-fiber routes, and its Khon Kaen site will have three.[781][353] Telehouse Bangkok advertises a diverse duct with 4 routes, and True IDC up to four points of entry.[782][783]

The table sets out the fiber evidence for each site on the site selection shortlist; the coordinates are in model/sites.json in the repository.

No source maps fiber along Highway 2, names NT exchanges near the sites, or says which EGAT nodes are customer access points.

International capacity

NBTC counted 11 licensed IIG operators and about 13 Tbps of international bandwidth at the end of 2020 (a secondary and dated source), mostly to Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong over eight cables.[789] NT says 80% of Thai cables run south, and it launched the east-coast ADC cable on November 26, 2025; Google's TalayLink landing was approved in May 2026.[790][791] The investor buys international capacity from IIG carriers and needs only the domestic path to them.

An AS number and IP addresses

Registry and AS number

APNIC's seven national registries are in Indonesia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Viet Nam, and APNIC has accepted no new ones since February 26, 2024, so a Thai company joins APNIC directly (our reading).[764] A network qualifies for an AS number if it is multihomed or must interconnect with other networks, as a data center with two carriers and exchange ports does (our reading).[792] Two AS numbers per account are free.[765]

IPv4 and IPv6

Since February 28, 2019 an account receives at most a /23 (512 addresses) from APNIC's last pool, and a first-time member must have used a /24 from its upstream provider or show an immediate need for one.[792] Proposal prop-168 (September 2026) would let holders top up to a /22 with a five-year ban on transfers; its outcome is unknown.[793] Members with an IPv4 allocation qualify for a /32 of IPv6, which a host that hands addresses to customers should take (our reading).[794]

More addresses

In the third quarter of 2026, blocks in the APNIC region traded at USD 23.95 per address on average (10 deals); the broker's reference price for a /24 is USD 25 per address to buy or USD 0.59 a month to lease, and a leasing marketplace quotes USD 0.30 to 0.35.[766][795] A Thai provider charges 100 THB a month for each extra address.[775]

Routing security

Route objects live in APNIC's Whois, and ROAs (signed records naming the AS allowed to announce a prefix) are created in MyAPNIC.[796][797] BKNIX requires a public AS number and public addresses, and it takes part in MANRS, the routing-security program.[798]

The fees come from APNIC's schedule and cost page;[765][755] the arithmetic is ours (256 addresses per /24, 33 THB per USD).

Licenses for selling connectivity

License types

Under the Telecommunications Business Act, a Type 1 license covers an operator without its own network and is issued on notification, while Type 3 covers an operator's own network for the public and may start only after NBTC approval.[768] NBTC lists IIG and NIX services and leased circuits as services that need a network of one's own, and plain internet service as one that does not.[799] Dark fiber is Type 3: in February 2026 NBTC let Mu Space add it to its Type 3 license.[800]

Does a host need a license?

On July 27, 2026, 26 entities held NBTC licenses covering data-center services, 23 of them Type 1.[801] The law firm FOSR writes that data-center services including connectivity to third-party networks need Type 1, and that NBTC treats a cloud as telecom when the provider supplies connectivity; only four cloud providers held licenses in 2023.[802][803] Lex Bangkok names data-center operators that resell connectivity to tenants.[767] No NBTC text we found says so explicitly, so this conclusion rests on the law firms and the license count.

Foreign ownership

Ministerial Regulation (No. 5) B.E. 2569, dated August 18, 2026, removes Type 1 services by operators without their own network from the permit requirement of the Foreign Business Act. The exemption covers the activity, not the whole company (law-firm summaries; we did not fetch the Gazette text).[767][804] Type 2 and 3 applicants must not be a "foreigner" under that Act, which in practice means Thai-majority ownership (our reading).[768]

Fees

A news report of an NBTC board decision tiers the annual license fee from 0.125% of revenue up to 100 million THB, to 1.5% above 5 billion; the page shows no date (probably 2017).[805] On February 19, 2026 the board approved in principle a universal-service (USO) contribution of 2.5% of telecom revenue, as a draft for public hearing.[800] On 10 million THB of telecom revenue, that is 12,500 THB plus 250,000 THB a year (our arithmetic).

What follows in practice

In our reading, the investor should lease wavelengths, circuits, and transit from Type 3 carriers and hold a Type 1 license for reselling connectivity. Whether lighting leased dark fiber with one's own optics counts as operating one's own network is unanswered. Leased wavelengths, lit by the carrier, keep the investor clearly on the service side.

Where to peer

Telehouse Bangkok (Rama 9) hosts TH-IX, BKNIX, BBIX Thailand, JTIX, TRUE-IX, and AMS-IX Bangkok, says all major Thai carriers are present, and sells cross-connects at one fixed but unpublished price.[756][782]

Networks and ports come from PeeringDB unless marked, and operators from its organization records.[771][769][811]

Which exchanges

TH-IX and BKNIX are the must-haves, and BBIX comes third (our judgment). Access networks are harder to reach. AIS's networks have no Thai exchange port in PeeringDB (its broadband network lists a "Restrictive" policy), and True has 2x800G at its own TRUE-IX but 10G at BKNIX and BBIX, so both are reached through transit or private peering (our reading).[812] UniNet has an "Open" policy but only education members, so the investor can peer with it but cannot buy transit from it (our reading).[813]

Outside Bangkok

PeeringDB lists no facility or exchange in Nakhon Ratchasima, Chaiyaphum, or Khon Kaen.[770] For the pilot, BKNIX Chiang Mai is in the ITSC building, where CMU has a 10 Gbit port (option A, hardware).[233]

Singapore

Bangkok to Singapore measured 22.7 to 23.1 ms round trip on October 27, 2026.[432] NT's gateway connects to Equinix Singapore, HKIX, AMS-IX, LINX, DE-CIX, and BBIX.[814] SGIX charges SGD 1,500 (about 38,000 THB, est.) a month for 100G, but it needs a circuit to Singapore.[815] Equinix plans two data centers in Bangna, but PeeringDB shows no Equinix exchange in Thailand.[816][771]

What a mature provider builds

Hetzner lists 10,790 Gbit/s of public peering, 11,600 Gbit/s of transit, and 27,730 Gbit/s of private peering,[489] while BKNIX's all-time peak across all its members is 480 Gb/s.[807] The investor starts with 10G ports and adds private peering as traffic grows (our judgment).

What lines and transit cost

Transit

The sources conflict. DCConnect's Bangkok range is ten or more times the CMU award, and TeleGeography calls Thai dedicated internet "very expensive, especially at the 10 GigE level."[819][821] We weight the CMU award, a real contract close to Singapore's median, and treat DCConnect as an upper bound for small buyers. Until quotes arrive, our planning bands are 60,000 to 150,000 THB a month for 10G of mixed transit and 300,000 to 900,000 THB for 100G (est.).

Dark fiber

Sellers quote dark fiber in THB per core-km a month.

A direct line for each site

The monthly cost is 2 cores x distance x rate. Fiber adds about 4.9 microseconds per km one way, or 9.8 round trip.[826] Distances are railway kilometers from Bangkok, used as a proxy for the fiber route.[784][827]

The arithmetic is ours. The round trips are floors, because real routes run longer and equipment adds delay; that is why option A estimates 8 to 15 ms for Chiang Mai. Nakhon Ratchasima city (rail km 263.65) also comes out at about 2.6 ms.

Wavelengths

EGAT, Interlink, and Symphony sell wavelengths, but none publishes a price.[761][779] A 10G or 100G wave uses a small share of a pair that carries tens of terabits, so we expect waves to cost far less than dark fiber at 10 to 100G, and we use OTARO's 160,000 THB for 100G as a proxy. Dark fiber, a fixed cost, wins only at several 100G waves per route (our inference; quotes are needed).

Building fiber

Interlink's PEA contracts, 1,400 km for 99,938,000 THB and 3,600 km for 249,705,900 THB including VAT, come to about 69,000 to 71,000 THB per km, probably for aerial cable on poles (our arithmetic and reading).[778] At that rate 250 km costs about 17 to 18 million THB (USD 0.53 million), the price of 14 to 29 months of a pair leased at list price. Owning the fiber, however, needs a right of way and a Type 3 partner, so the rate matters most for the last kilometers.

A connectivity plan by stage

The plan below is our design and our judgment; the table after it gives the costs.

Stage 1: pilot at CMU ITSC

ITSC forbids colocation customers to bring their own circuits into its data center,[14] so the pilot uses CMU's network, which NT supplies at 20 Gbps from October 1, 2026, and peers through CMU at BKNIX Chiang Mai.[772][233] The investor cannot bring in a line of its own. It can join APNIC now; whether CMU would announce the investor's prefix is a question for ITSC. The edge is a pair of OPNsense firewalls (open stack).

Stage 2: the new data center opens

• The investor runs its own AS, with a /23 and a /32 from day one and with ROAs and route objects, so that it can change carriers without renumbering.
• Four circuits enter the building, matching BOI's 4 systems and 60 Gbps. Two 100G backhauls on separate rights of way (for example an EGAT wavelength and a railway or road carrier) run to a small point of presence (PoP) at Telehouse Bangkok, and each of two IIG carriers delivers at least 10 Gbps of internet at the site. Whether BOI counts the investor's backhaul as systems is to be confirmed.
• At the PoP, one rack holds the investor's routers and a 100G switch, with ports at TH-IX and BKNIX, and BBIX third.
• A link of 10G or faster runs to the ITSC site for BOI cloud activity 8.2.2 and for backup, if ITSC grants an exception to its circuit ban; otherwise a Bangkok colocation serves as the second site.
• Routing and protection run on open software (open stack): NixOS routers with FRRouting for BGP and nftables for filtering, FastNetMon to detect attacks and trigger blackholing or diversion over BGP, upstream scrubbing for floods larger than the links (True IDC sells it), and RPKI validation of received routes.[590][514][515]
• A cheaper start brings carrier circuits straight to the site (CMU gets 20 Gbps for about 133,000 THB a month) and adds the PoP once peering pays.

Stage 3: 2 MW and busy

Transit and exchange ports grow to 100G, and the backhaul gains more waves or, on dark fiber, more optics.

All amounts are in THB and are our estimates; the inputs are in the table, and the arithmetic is in model/connectivity_costs.py in the repository. In USD, stage 2 comes to about 16,400 to 49,500 a month and 54,000 to 119,000 once, and stage 3 to about 49,100 to 107,100 a month. A year of stage 2 costs 6.5 to 19.6 million THB, and a year of stage 3 costs 19.5 to 42.4 million THB. The figures leave out cross-connects, optics and DWDM gear, the link to a second BOI site, VAT where lists exclude it, NBTC fees, and staff. At 2,500 THB per core-km, the dark-fiber backhaul would cost 2.5 million THB a month. We found no router price; a Dell R760 (Singapore default configuration, more than a router needs) lists at SGD 58,661.54, about 1.5 million THB (est. rate).[465]

What this means for the investor

What follows is our judgment.

Two fiber routes belong among the criteria for choosing a site, because they cannot simply be bought later. Any shortlisted site can buy 100G once fiber arrives; what differs is how many separate rights of way pass nearby. Sikhio and Muak Lek are the best evidenced and Thep Sathit the least, so the investor should ask carriers for route maps before buying land.

The investor should join APNIC early. About 59,000 THB buys an AS, 512 IPv4 addresses, and a /32 of IPv6, and it leaves the investor free to change carriers. IPv6 should be used widely, with IPv4 added as customers need it.

Long-haul fiber should be leased. The investor holds a Type 1 license, buys waves, circuits, and transit from Type 3 carriers, and builds only the last kilometers with a licensed partner.

Connectivity belongs in the budget next to power. At opening, 6.5 to 19.6 million THB a year is roughly 15 to 50% of the electricity bill for 1 MW of IT (about 40 million THB a year; see the summary).

Lines should be priced from quotes rather than list prices. A 250 km dark-fiber pair costs 7 to 15 million THB a year at list, so waves are the default until traffic fills several 100G waves.

Latency does not separate the sites around Korat. They are 1.5 to 2.6 ms from Bangkok (the fiber floor), against 23 ms to Singapore.

Open questions