AS1273

AS1273 is an actively routed autonomous system operated by Vodafone Group PLC. As observed by the RouteViews route collector on 2026-08-20, it originates roughly 192 IPv4 prefixes and 2 IPv6 prefixes — an estimated 2.01 million IPv4 addresses — with 164 distinct neighboring ASNs seen in the same observation, confirming this is a large, heavily interconnected international carrier, not a dormant registration.

Vodafone's own site presents this network through its "Our Global Network" and Vodafone Carrier Services pages, describing it as a wholly Vodafone-owned global IP network sold to carriers, ISPs, and enterprises for IP transit, MPLS, Ethernet, and international private circuits. Its lineage traces to Cable & Wireless, the historic British telecoms firm; Vodafone folded the Cable and Wireless Worldwide wholesale carrier into its own operations via a Court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement in 2012.

Concrete first-party infrastructure items include the 2Africa subsea cable system, where Vodafone landed the UK segment at Bude, Cornwall — one of the largest subsea cable systems, with a rated capacity of up to 180 Tbps — with onward fiber to London, and an April 2024 partnership joining Google's Verified Peering Provider programme for dedicated cloud interconnection, live at launch in cities including London, Frankfurt, New York, and Tokyo.

Relationship direction comes from a separate dataset on a different day. The CAIDA AS Relationships cache (dataset date 2026-08-01) infers AS701, AS1299, and AS3356 as transit providers to AS1273, alongside 147 customers and 85 settlement-free peers among published neighbours.

Those are inferences drawn from observed paths, not disclosed peering agreements, and the counts are a floor rather than a census: a pair CAIDA does not classify is unclassified, never a peer.

The IANA AS Number registry places AS1273 in the 1-1876 range recorded as "Assigned by ARIN," so its administering RIR is ARIN. Several other fields that a routing-registry lookup would normally supply remain Unknown as of 2026-08: the ASN's original allocation date, RPKI validation posture, and exchange-point presence. The routing figures above reflect a single collector's snapshot, not a registry-declared allocation size.

Incident (April 2021)

AS1273 was one of five upstream transit providers for AS55410 (Vodafone Idea Ltd, a separately registered Indian mobile operator), which briefly leaked more than 30,000 prefixes not belonging to it on April 16, 2021 — catchpoint.com, blog.apnic.net.

Propagation

Two of AS55410's five upstreams filtered or avoided propagating the leak; AS1273 was not among them, and roughly 71 leaked networks remained reachable only via AS1273 after most of the leak was withdrawn elsewhere — catchpoint.com.

Role

AS1273 acted as a propagating upstream, not the misconfiguring origin; post-incident commentary noted the leak could have been contained with stricter max-prefix or AS-path filtering on that session — blog.apnic.net, manrs.org.

Blocklist status

No ASN-wide blocklisting found in Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP materials as of an August 2026 search; CleanTalk recorded 0 of 512 IPs flagged spam-active on one monitored /23 subnet, a small sample against the ASN's roughly two-million-address footprint — spamhaus.org, cleantalk.org.

CVE / malware

No CVE, malware, or botnet command-and-control association naming AS1273 found as of an August 2026 search.

Operator

Vodafone Group PLC — UK-incorporated multinational telecom (Companies House no. 01833679, status Active), operating this network as part of its wholesale/carrier business; the specific registrant subsidiary within the Vodafone group is Unknown [Confirmed for Vodafone Group PLC's operatorship; Unknown for the specific registrant subsidiary] — vodafone.com/business/solutions/by-business-type/vodafone-carrier-services, UK Companies House (co. 01833679)

Country / RIR

United Kingdom (GB) — Vodafone Group PLC is UK-incorporated (Companies House no. 01833679), HQ Newbury, Berkshire [Confirmed]. RIR: ARIN — the IANA AS Number registry records the 1-1876 range containing AS1273 as "Assigned by ARIN"

[Confirmed] — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01833679, the IANA Autonomous System Number registry 1-1876

Allocated

Unknown [Unknown]

Org status

Active, publicly traded multinational (Vodafone Group Public Limited Company), UK Companies House no. 01833679, incorporated 17 July 1984, status Active. Its wholesale carrier arm absorbed Cable and Wireless Worldwide plc in 2012 via a Court-sanctioned scheme of arrangement [Confirmed] — find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/01833679, vodafone.com newsroom (Cable & Wireless Worldwide acquisition material)

Contacts

Unknown [Unknown]

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

see the Security section above for the April 2021 AS55410 route-leak incident and blocklist/CVE checks as of an August 2026 search

Network & routing

Network type

Global wholesale/carrier IP backbone — IP transit, MPLS, Ethernet, international private circuits — sold to carriers, ISPs, and enterprises; presented on Vodafone's own site as "Our Global Network" and "Vodafone Carrier Services," and described on its IP Transit product page as a "wholly owned global IP network" [Confirmed] — vodafone.com/business/solutions/our-global-network, vodafone.com/business/products/fixed-connectivity/ip-transit, vodafone.com/business/solutions/by-business-type/vodafone-carrier-services

Size

192 IPv4 prefixes and 2 IPv6 prefixes originated; an estimated 2,013,440 IPv4 addresses (~2.01M), as observed by RouteViews on 2026-08-20 [Confirmed] — the RouteViews BGP routing data (CC BY 4.0) AS1273

Routing/peering

164 distinct neighboring ASNs observed by RouteViews on 2026-08-20 (32-entry capped sample: AS72, AS174, AS577, AS1299, AS1813, AS1820, AS2497, AS2516, AS2611, AS2914, AS3209, AS3216, AS3257, AS3303, AS3329, AS3333, AS3356, AS3360, AS3491, AS3573, AS4651, AS4775, AS5378, AS5511, AS5607, AS6453, AS6648, AS6660, AS6758, AS6762, AS6830, AS6939); this is undirected AS-path adjacency, not a customer/upstream/peer classification, so it carries no direction on its own. Relationship roles come separately from the CAIDA AS Relationships cache (dataset date 2026-08-01, CAIDA Public AUA), which classifies 235 relationships touching AS1273 among published neighbours: 3 providers (AS701, AS1299, AS3356 — the upstreams), 147 customers, and 85 settlement-free peers. Those are CAIDA inferences from observed AS paths, not disclosed peering agreements, and the counts are a floor, not a census — a pair CAIDA does not classify is unclassified, never a peer. Peering policy: Unknown — no first-party technical peering-policy page found on vodafone.com [Confirmed for the neighbor count; Inferred for relationship roles; Unknown for policy] — the RouteViews BGP routing data (CC BY 4.0) AS1273, the cached registry snapshots/caida-as-rel.csv AS1273

RPKI

Unknown — an unevaluated status, not a report of an absent or invalid ROA [Unknown]

Notable usage

UK landing partner for the 2Africa subsea cable system at Bude, Cornwall — one of the largest subsea cable systems, with a rated capacity of up to 180 Tbps — with onward connectivity to London; joined Google's Verified Peering Provider programme in April 2024 for dedicated cloud interconnection, live at launch in cities including London, Frankfurt, New York, and Tokyo [Confirmed] — vodafone.com/business/news-and-insights/company-news/2africa-landed-in-the-uk, vodafone.com newsroom (Google Verified Peering Provider release). A 2019 Vodafone data sheet describes roughly 96 core points of presence and ~12 Tbps of customer traffic — dated, and the source PDF would not render as text on direct fetch

[Likely] — Vodafone IP Transit Data Sheet 2019 (Vodafone-hosted asset)

Related ASNs

AS55410 (Vodafone Idea Ltd, a separately registered Indian mobile operator; AS1273 was one of its upstream transit providers during an April 2021 BGP route leak — see Security) [Confirmed] — catchpoint.com, blog.apnic.net

Related fields

AS rank, customer cone size, and MANRS membership are all Unknown [Unknown]

Analyst note

Actively routed, large international carrier ASN, not the dormant/legacy case some low-numbered ASNs represent. Routing figures reflect a single RouteViews observation (2026-08-20), not a registry-declared allocation size. Historical identity traces to Cable & Wireless / Cable and Wireless Worldwide, folded into Vodafone in 2012. Upstreams are a CAIDA inference from observed AS paths (dataset date 2026-08-01, separate from the RouteViews observation): AS701, AS1299, AS3356. RIR is ARIN, from the IANA AS Number registry range 1-1876. Allocation date, RPKI status, exchange presence, and abuse contacts are Unknown as of 2026-08.