Strengthening regional connectivity –
The bandwidth requirements of intra-Asian submarine cables are projected to grow by 39 per cent annually between 2011 and 2018.
In a bid to meet the ever-growing demand for connectivity between Southeast Asia and North Asia, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT), Singapore-based StarHub, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, and Japan’s NTT Communications announced the development of the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) system in early 2011. During the past few months, the partner operators have made steady headway in the construction and development of landing stations for the cable system, which went partly live in June 2012.
The ASE is a 7,200 km long intra-Asia undersea optic fibre cable system designed to link Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore in its first phase of operation. It has a high bandwidth capacity of 15 tbps and is equipped with high transmission and optical add-drop multiplexer technologies to enable faster data transfer at about 40 Gbps.
The total project cost ranges from $304 million to $400 million. Japan-based information and technology service providers Fujitsu Limited and NEC Corporation have won the contract for installing the cable and equipment for the system. While NEC will manufacture, install, and monitor all submersible plants, Fujitsu will be responsible for fabricating and installing the submarine line terminal equipment.
