Thailand Connects To Hight-bandwidth Submarine Cable
CAT Telecom will today open the Asia-America Gateway it has jointly built up with other 18 leading telecom parties. The gateway is a high-bandwidth fibre-optic submarine cable system that connects Southeast Asia to the United States.
Internet users throughout Asia should start to see a dramatic increase in internet speed for websites located outside of the region when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation today.
The new 20,000km (about 12,400 miles) AAG – an optical fibre cable network stretching from Malaysia to the West Coast of America via Guam and Hawaii – is due to commence operating in August.
The cable has additional landing points in Hong Kong and the Philippines, with branches to Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.
The cable became a reality in June 2006, when AiTi of Brunei Darussalam, CAT Telecom (Thailand), PLDT (Philippines), REACH (Hong Kong), StarHub (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam) all signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) for its construction.
In addition to being one of the longest undersea cable roll-outs in history, the AAG will actually shorten the route for data from Asia to America, avoiding some of the worlds’ areas most prone to seismic activity in the process.
The demand for better quality communications services throughout Asia has been an ongoing battle between foreign and local businesses and regional communications carriers, and one that has affected economic growth in some countries.
The AAG uses the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technologies with a minimum design capacity of 1.28 terabit/s and a design capacity of 1.92 terabit/s.
The last of the undersea cable work was completed in June and all 10 landing points were completed months ago.
The new cable will improve e-commerce traffic and help meet the increasing demand for faster and more reliable internet, video and other multimedia services and applications.
