SINGAPORE--In a move to address regional bandwidth demand, SingTel and 15 other telecommunications carriers have inked an agreement to construct a new submarine cable linking Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe.
Costing US$500 million to build, the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) cable system will span 20,000 km across the world to achieve ultra fast terabit-per-second connectivity. It will land in 14 countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.
According to a press statement issued by SingTel today, this is “a timely response to bandwidth demand in these regions as parallel networks, such as SEA-ME-WE 3, are approaching their maximum design capacity”.
Expected to be ready for service in the third quarter of 2005, the SEA-ME-WE 4 system will carry telephone, Internet and various broadband data streams. Alcatel Submarine Networks and Fujitsu have been awarded the contract to implement the cable system.
SingTel said it will fork out up to US$40 million for the project.
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Getting a little tired of the self-promotion of Singapore in this CNETAsia news. This is getting too much now to put SingTel in the headlines of a regional effort of 15 Telcos!!
Posted by anonymous on Tuesday, March 30 2004 12:32 PM