043007: Alcatel, NEC to link RP with US

By Dennis Estopace

Reporter

PUBLICLY-LISTED Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) Co. joined eight telecommunications companies and the government of Brunei in awarding French firm Alcatel-Lucent and Japan’s NEC Corp. a submarine cable network project. The contract bagged by Alcatel-Lucent and NEC to supply 20,000 kilometers of submarine cable was signed and announced late Friday. It would cost $500 million, a statement from the Paris, France-headquartered firm Alcatel-Lucent said. Alcatel-Lucent said it expects the cable network “to meet the forecasted explosive growth in bandwidth requirements for new and revolutionary broadband applications such as IP [Internet protocol], video, data, and other multimedia services.” The project is touted as the first direct Terabit submarine cable network between Southeast Asia and the US. According to the company, it signed the contract April 27 with a consortium formed by 10 parties including the government of Brunei, AT&T (USA), Bharti (India), CAT (Thailand), PLDT (Philippines), PT Telkom (Indonesia), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia), Telstra (Australia), StarHub (Singapore) and VNPT (Vietnam). Alcatel-Lucent said it and NEC will design, manufacture, install, integrate and commission the full network on a turnkey basis. The project is scheduled to be completed by late next year. The company said that the network will link Malaysia to the United States via Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the West coast of the US. The announcement comes four months after multiple earthquakes off the coast of Southern Taiwan ruptured undersea data communications cables between North America and Asia and hobbled telecommunications services within the region. Alcatel-Lucent said that the new cable network would also link up with the existing route via North Asia.

 

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