SingTel, PacNet join new cabling project - Singapore
Consortium to lay Pacific undersea cables linking Japan and the US, promising more stable, high-density Net traffic
By Alfred Siew, Technology Correspondent
SINGTEL and PacNet have joined a consortium that includes online giant Google to lay new undersea cables that could avoid a repeat of the 2006 Asian telecom blackout.
The US$300 million (S$421 million) system could also mean smoother videos delivered from Google’s YouTube video sharing website.
Called Unity, the cable system will span 10,000km of the Pacific Ocean and link Chikura, Japan to Los Angeles in the United States.
Singapore users will be able to connect to American websites, which attract the bulk of Internet traffic from here, via Japan when the system is completed in 2010.
It promises to better withstand shocks like the earthquake that knocked out phone and Internet services in the region in December 2006.
Tremors off Taiwan cut several undersea cables at once, including backup systems.
Also, just last month, ship anchors in the Mediterranean cut two cables, logging off the Middle East and much of South Asia, including India.
SingTel spokesman Dylan Tan said the new system was not planned directly in response to those outages, but it could help overcome similar problems in future.
‘For areas where there are potential cable cuts, the cables are dug deeper so they can avoid being damaged,’ he told The Straits Times.
The new cyber highway has a capacity of 7.68 terabits per second. This lets as many as seven million Net users download a 1MB file simultaneously without slowdown.
On paper, this means it can carry as much traffic as the C2C system that links cities such as Hong Kong and Singapore.
The new cyber highway is among a handful that will be laid across the Pacific Ocean to hook up Asia with the US in the next few years, to cater to rising Net usage.
Analyst Paul Budde from telecom consultancy Paul Budde Communication said the usage boom is partly due to the popularity of online videos.
He added: ‘One of the most exciting elements of the deal is that Google is a partner…They simply want to make sure that affordable high-speed broadband will become available so people can use their media-rich applications like YouTube.’
Besides SingTel, PacNet and Google, other regional telcos involved in the project are Bharti Airtel, Global Transit and KDDI.
The construction of the Unity project has been awarded to NEC and Tyco Telecommunications.
Source : Straits Times - 28 Feb 2008
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