International carriers continue to play an integral role in providing connectivity, diversity and elevating the region’s telecommunications efficiency level when they formed a consortium for the establishment of the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system.
The collaboration was made official when the consortium members – Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Omantel (Oman), Etisalat (UAE), Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (India) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka) – signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) and the Supply Contract for BBG in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Inking the agreement were Rozaimy Rahman, Executive Vice President, Global & Wholesale, TM; Rick Perry, Head of International Development, Vodafone Group Technology, Vodafone; Ali Amiri, Executive Vice President, Carrier and Wholesale, Etisalat; Sohail Qadir, Vice President, Omantel; Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited; and Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Group Chief Executive Officer of Dialog Axiata Sri Lanka. The signing ceremony between the consortium members was witnessed by Datuk Bazlan Osman, Group Chief Financial Officer, TM. The BBG submarine cable system, spanning approximately 8,000 km, will link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka.
The construction of BBG 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 through interconnections with other existing and newly built cable systems landing in India, the Middle East and the Far East Asia. BBG will also serve as an extraordinary opportunity for business growth as it will help supporting current and future high capacity requirements from the surrounding areas of the region as well as next generation Internet applications.
The construction of this cable system is a clear indication of the growing demand for bandwidth at the participating countries. The markets are expected to see strong growth with the continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion.
The BBG cable system is designed to provide upgradable and transmission facilities by adopting the state-of-the-art 100Gbps technology. This cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by end of 2014.
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Press Release, May 01, 2013