(30 April 2007 2:25 pm)

MUMBAI: Major leaders of the telecommunications industry along with Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telecom services provider, have signed a formal construction and maintenance agreement in Kuala Lumpur last week, to build the first high bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system from the South East Asia direct to the USA.

The cable system, known as the Asia-America Gateway (AAG), will be built at a cost of about $ 560 million.

The cable project is spearheaded by 17 telecommunications companies namely, AiTi, AT&T, BayanTel, Bharti, BT Global Network Services, CAT Telecom, ETPI, Maxis, PCP Company Limited, PLDT, Saigon Postal Corporation, StarHub, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra, TNZL, Viettel and VNPT.

The supply contract for the construction of the AAG cable system was signed between the AAG and the consortium of ASN-NEC Corporation, later on the same day, in Kuala Lumpur.

The AAG cable system is designed to provide 1.92 Tbps using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to provide upgradeable, future proof transmission facilities that support Internet and e-commerce, a company release asserts.

The birth of AAG cable system will compliment existing high bandwidth cable systems in the region. In addition, the AAG cable system will provide the much-needed diversity against traditional routes to the US, mainly carrying broadband traffic. This is important considering recent earthquakes that took out almost all cable systems in the region. The AAG cable system, with its large bandwidth and high quality transmission technology, will meet the present and future burgeoning growth in telecommunications traffic.

Says David Nishball, president, Enterprise Services, Airtel, “Our partnership in AAG cable system reinforces our commitment to invest in state of the art technologies for providing scalable and future proof solutions for our International customers. This investment is in line with our strategy to extend our International footprint and focus on connecting our customers in India to Asia and the Americas. While our existing i2i and SeMeWe4 cable systems already provide connectivity across the globe, the AAG cable system will help offer increased redundancy and resilient networks, while meeting the increasing demands of voice, private data and Internet traffic.”