Major submarine cable projects in Asia
Examining the existing submarine telecommunications infrastructure reveals that the over-provision of submarine capacity in the region has been in the intra-regional networks rather than in the large regional and transPacific cables. In the case of the intra-regional cables, over the last few years major cables coming into service, including FNAL (FLAG North Asian Loop), EAC (East Asia Crossing), APCN2 and C2C (City to City), have resulted in 16Tb/s of extra capacity. By mid-2002, only a tiny fraction (876Gb/ s) of this capacity was in use. On the other hand, the trans-Pacific routes do not have this luxury of over supply of capacity and the pressure to lay more such cables has been mounting. It is noted that a new Tycom Pacific cable that is planned for 2003 will add another 300Gb/s to trans-Pacific capacity. This overview concentrates on some of the latest developments and highlights some of the lesser-known projects.
Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN 2) In April 2000, 44 companies joined forces to build APCN 2, a US$1.06 billion submarine cable network linking eight major markets. Major investors in the system include Cable & Wireless, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, AT&T, BT, Global One, Japan Telecom, KDDI, Korea Telecom, KPN, Metromedia Fibre Network Services, NTT Com, NCIC, PLDT, Reach, 30
Paul Budde continues his article on the infrastructure of Asian cable systems StarHub, SingTel, Taiwan Fixed Network, Teleglobe, Telekom Malaysia and Williams Communications. NEC (Japan) was awarded the supply contract for the 19,000km cable system. In December 2001, the APCN-2 became operational. Connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, the network also tapped into trans-Pacific cables between China, Japan and the US. The system, which offers 80Gb/s of capacity and is planned to be upgraded to 160Gb/ s in 2003, will provide additional capacity to meet the growing demand for voice, data and Internet bandwidth in the region. With a designed capacity of 2.5Tb/s, the system will be upgradeable using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology. APCN2 was the first pan-Asian submarine ring system to come into service. In July 2002, the APCN2 cable consortium reported that multiple cable failures that had interrupted service on the APCN2 network had been fully restored, explaining that repairs were