AUGUST 28, 2006 -- VSNL Singapore Pte Ltd. (VSNL International; search for VSNL), the international arm of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd., will significantly expand its undersea capabilities. The company announced it will upgrade its Trans-Pacific submarine cable network to a 1 Tbit capacity to serve increased customer demand between Asia and the US. It also says it will build a new multi-terabit submarine cable system linking Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.
The new intra-Asia cable will enable VSNL International to better serve its global customers doing business in and with the burgeoning Asia-Pacific markets. This investment follows the recent announcement by VSNL to build a new system from India to Europe that will provide connectivity to the Gulf region and the African continent. The intra-Asia cable, when combined with the Tata Indicom Cable System (TIC) and the TGN-Pacific cable system (both of which are built with eight fiber pairs capable of supporting more than 7 Tbits/sec of traffic), will complete VSNL International's multi-terabit capability from India to Asia and onward to the U.S.
"With Asian bandwidth demand forecasted to grow at an average of 27% CAGR, VSNL International is taking steps to expand its capacity to serve customers in the booming intra-Asia market," comments Vinod Kumar, president of VSNL International. "This new high-capacity cable system, soon to be one of the region's largest, combined with our existing C2C capacity and TGN-P capacity, will enable us to deliver high-performance bandwidth at the most cost-effective pricing and fulfill our strategy to become the market leader in bandwidth supply."
VSNL International will commence construction of the new intra-Asia cable by December 2006. The scheduled build time for the project is 12-14 months. The company is already in the process of finalizing design details, selecting suppliers, and identifying additional partners for the project. Future potential landing stations for the cable include locations in China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Guam.
Alan Mauldin, research director for TeleGeography Research, comments, "TeleGeography's latest analysis suggests that growth rates in excess of 30% are very likely on these routes, the intra-Asian market alone will need to supply in excess of 400 Gbits of new capacity every year."
Meanwhile, the company will upgrade the TGN-P to a lit capacity of almost 1,000 Gbit/sec. VSNL International expects the first phase of this upgrade to be implemented by the end of 2006. Acquired by VSNL in 2005 as part of the Tyco Global Network (TGN), the TGN-P is designed as a ring with two 12,000-km submarine cables. Each cable carries eight fiber pairs, with each fiber capable of carrying up to ninety-six 10-Gbit wavelengths. Currently, 640 Gbits/sec of capacity is activated on the TGN-P system and is used by VSNL International customers to carry live voice and data traffic. The TGN-P connects several U.S. West Coast Internet and carrier exchanges directly to Japan and onward to other Asian destinations through multiple regional sub-sea cable interconnections.
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