VSNL building $200 million Asian cable system

Mumbai: Telecom operator Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) plans to spend $200 million on an intra-Asian submarine cable system that will link Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan with an additional connection to the Philippines and, potentially, Vietnam.

VSNL is proceeding with the construction of the TGN-Intra Asia cable system, which will be constructed by Tyco Telecommunications (US) Inc, a pioneer in undersea communications technology and marine services, a company release said.

The TGN-Intra Asia submarine cable is a new 4 fibre pair cable system that will provide up to 3.8 Tera bits of capacity to the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific market allowing the company to provide additional bandwidth with increased route diversity and extended geographical reach.

The cable will provide a direct connection from Singapore to the company''s Transpacific Network in Japan, avoiding any other landing points and connecting to the TGN-Pacific cable system directly at the landing station.

The TGN-Intra Asia cable, when combined with the Tata Indicom Cable System (TIC) and the TGN-Pacific cable system (both of which are capable of supporting 7+ Tbit/s of traffic), will complete the company''s multi-terabit capability from India to Asia and onward to the US west coast and Guam.

VSNL also said it is currently evaluating plans to develop future extensions into Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan and China and said it has obtained commitments for other investment partnerships, which it will announce ''in the near future''.

The company has also partnered with Hong Kong based PCCW Ltd''s unit PCCW Global and Vietnam based EVNTelecom for the project.