A consortium of telecom companies, including India’s Reliance Industries, are setting up a submarine cable system linking Malaysia and Singapore to West Asia.
The sub-sea cable system – Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) – will span about 8,000 km with connections to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka. This cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by end of 2014, Reliance Industries said in a statement.
Reliance Jio Infocomm, Reliance Industries’ telecom subsidiary, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, Vodafone Group (UK), Omantel (Oman), Etisalat (UAE) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka) are the consortium partner on the cable. A Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) and supply contract for BBG was signed in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
The cable would link link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates),
It is planned not only to provide connectivity between South East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, but also to Europe, Africa and to the Far East Asia. These would be through interconnections with other existing and newly built cable systems landing in India, the Middle East and the Far East Asia.
The BBG cable system is designed to provide upgradable and transmission facilities by adopting the 100 GBPS technology, it said.