SingTel builds US$400 million Japan cable

The 17 Tbps link will connect Singapore,Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

The system is expected to be operational by the second quarter of 2012.

SingTel will be part of a consortium of telecommunications carriers to build the system.

The 6-fibre pair high capacity submarine cable system has a design capacity of 17 Terabits per second (Tbps) and can be upgraded to 23 Tbps, making it the highest capacity system ever to be built.

Mr Mark Chong, SingTel’s Executive Vice President for Networks, said that the cable network will cater to the strong demand for data and e-commerce in Asia and would also serve Singapore well when the government rolls out the National Broadband Network in 2012.

“As the SJC connects Singapore to other cable systems in Asia, it will provide access to other parts of the region and serve as an important cable diversity route. SJC is designed to avoid outage prone areas. It will also be linked to the new Unity cable network, thus enhancing SingTel’s ability to offer superior connectivity between Asia and the US,” he added.

SingTel is a founding member of the Unity cable, which is expected to be ready in the middle of 2010.

The other members of the SJC consortium are Globe Telecom, Google, KDDI, Network i2i, Reliance Globalcom, Telemedia Pacific Inc., Ltd and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International. The consortium may be expanded to include other carriers in the future.