Telcos plan quake-free Asia-U.S. cable route

Chief Executive of Telekom Malaysia Abdul Wahid Omar speaks during a news conference after the signing ceremony to build an undersea cable between Southeast Asia and the United States in Putrajaya outside Kuala Lumpur April 27, 2007. Telekom Malaysia will invest $50 million in a planned $500 million undersea telecommunications cable project linking Southeast Asia and the United States, Telekom said on Friday.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (Reuters) - Asian phone companies unveiled plans on Friday to build a $500 million undersea cable between Southeast Asia and the United States to speed connections in the region and avoid earthquake zones.

Existing telecoms cables linking Asia and North America are nearing full capacity, while some of the oldest will need to be retired soon, Malaysia's communications minister said while announcing the project, to be led by Telekom Malaysia.

The 20,000-kilometre (12,400-mile) fiber-optic cable system would also take a different route from many existing cables to avoid quake-prone areas and a repeat of the disruption to Asian Web access caused by a tremor off Taiwan four months ago.

"The low-risk route was designed to avoid the volatile and hazardous Pacific ring," Communications Minister Lim Keng Yaik said, referring to a ring of sub-sea volcanoes and quake zones around the Pacific Ocean.

Telekom Malaysia said cable construction would begin immediately and that, when completed, it would directly link seven Asian countries -- Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, the Philippines and Hong Kong -- with the United States.

The cable network, designed to provide capacity of up to 1.92 Terabits of data per second, will start carrying commercial traffic by December 2008, with an initial capacity of 480 Gigabits per second, Telekom said in a statement.

"The undersea cable will provide a timely increase in both the capacity and diversity of Internet links between Asia and the United States, bearing in mind the disruption caused by the recent Taiwan earthquake late last year," Telekom Chief Executive Abdul Wahid Omar said.

"When it begins operations, Internet users can look forward to faster and more reliable international connectivity."

The main trans-Pacific link in the cable network, billed as the first to directly link Southeast Asia with the United States, would stretch from Hong Kong via the Philippines, Hawaii and Guam to the U.S. west coast.

Another cable would link Hong Kong to Malaysia, with spurs connecting the other countries in the network.

The cable consortium comprises 17 firms, mostly from Asia. Telekom and several other key members of the group are investing $50 million each in the project, Abdul Wahid said.

The group includes AT&T Inc., India's Bharti Airtel, British Telecom Global Network Services, Thailand's CAT Telecom, Indonesia's Indosat, Philippines Long Distance Telephone Co, Singapore's StarHub, Australia's Telstra, Telecom New Zealand and the Vietnam Post & Telecommunications Group.

The consortium has awarded the cable construction contract to Alcatel Submarine Network, a unit of France's Alcatel-Lucent, and to Japan's NEC Corp.

As growth in demand for capacity doubles every three years, the cable will attract traffic from south and southeast Asia because its route avoids waters off Taiwan that are prone to natural disasters, Telekom officials said.

"We believe that there is enough traffic that can be generated from Southeast Asia, as well as South Asia, to warrant another cable route that actually will be better in terms of risks against natural disasters because it doesn't pass through Taiwan waters," Telekom's chief executive for Malaysia business, Zamzamzairani Mohamad Isa, told reporters.