TM to invest US$140m in undersea cable system

Presenna Nambiar
New Straits Times
02-01-2011
TM to invest US$140m in undersea cable system
Byline: Presenna Nambiar
Edition: Main/Lifestyle
Section: Business Times
Type: News

TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd (TM) will spend US$140 million (RM429 million) to own two fibre pairs in an international submarine cable system, adding weight to its international carrying capacity and improving the resilience of its global network.

Known as Cahaya Malaysia, the two fibre pairs will directly link Malaysia to Hong Kong and Japan, and will improve latency, an element which boosts network speed by about 25 per cent.
Phase 1 of the cable system linking Malaysia to Japan will be completed by the middle of 2012, while Phase 2 linking Malaysia to Hong Kong will be completed by the end of 2012.

"We have to have routes for restoration ... in case one cable system is down, we have an alternative routing ensuring that our customers are not disrupted when they use the Internet, or any other kind of connectivity especially for businesses," TM group chief executive officer Datuk Seri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said after an agreement signing ceremony with Japan's NTT Communications Corp, part-owner and developer of the project.

The submarine cable system will have six fibre pairs.

Zamzamzairani said the new routing will avoid areas prone to seismic activities, improving its resilience to earthquakes.

In 2006, a major earthquake near the coast of Taiwan caused up to seven international cable systems downtime.

TM will fund the US$140 million investment internally.

The group is already a member of nine cable consortium projects. Currently it has a 453 gigabit per second (Gbps) capacity going out of Malaysia.

The two extra fibre pairs, which will have an initial capacity of 500 Gbps, has a design capacity of 15 terabit per second (Tbps).

Spanning a distance of about 7,000 kilometres, the new cable will use Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology and requires a total investment of US$412 million (RM1.3 billion).

NTT Communications will own the remaining four pairs of fibres, which it plans to develop in collaboration with other regional carriers to provide landing points in the Philippines and Singapore.

(Copyright 2011)