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Carrier Services
Eight Asian telcos to build subsea fiber optic network
Higher bandwidth capacity and redundancy will benefit region known for its subsea earthquakes
by Ek Heng, Asia-Pacific Correspondent
A new submarine fiber optic network, known as Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG), is in the offing with a memorandum of understanding signed recently by eight of Asia’s biggest telcos. Targeted to be ready for service in 2011, the 8,000 kilometer network with a minimum design capacity of four terabits per-second will link the region’s growing economies.
As demand continues to increase for high bandwidth communication, including enterprise network services and the Internet, the proposed fiber optic network will offer alternative communication routes and nodes. In the event of accidents or subsea earthquakes, it will minimize the impact of a breakdown in services provided by existing regional fiber optic network.
Using the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technologies, the proposed APG network is designed to provide a high-degree of interconnectivity with existing and planned high bandwidth communication systems.
The APG network will connect Japan, Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. The signatories to the agreement for the development of the gateway are China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, NTT Communication (Japan), Vietnam Post and Telecommunications (VNPT), Korea Telecom (KT), Philippines Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and Telekom Malaysia. The telcos will jointly finance and own the APG network.
Figure 1.
Three APG telcos also in AAG network
Three of the telcos in the APG consortium – PLDT, VNPT and Telekom Malaysia - are also participating in the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) project which spans 20,000 kilometers to connect Southeast Asia with the US.
Aside from Bayan Telecommunications and Eastern Telecommunications from Philippines, the other members of the AAG consortium are Brunei government , AT&T (US), Bharti Airtel (India), Communications Global Network (UK), Pacific Communication (Cambodia), CAT Telecom (Thailand), PT Indosat (Indonesia), PT Telekomunikasi (Indonesia), Starhub (Singapore), Telecom New Zealand, Telstra (Australia), while participants from Vietnam are Saigon Postel and Viettel.
Originally scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2008, delays in construction has led to revised deadline till August this year. The US$550 million the AAG network will link Southeast Asian countries, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong and Philippines with US territories in the Pacific, such as Guam and Hawaii, and the west coast.
In another development, NTT Communications announced its acquisition of Pacific Crossing without providing financial details. Pacific Crossings operates the 21,000-kilometer fiber optic network, PC-1, spanning Japan and the USA with two points in each country and has capacity of 3.2 terabits per second.
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