BRCS : What's Wrong?

Update - the illustration at the right is possibly inaccurate! Some people said that BRCS is not through Melacca strait; it connects Batam and Rengit at the right-side of Johor. It is definitely not Rengit as you can see on the illustration. Sorry for this! :-)

BRCS stands for Batam Rengit Cable System. It is a submarine optical cable linking Batam (Kepri, ID) to Rengit (Johor, MY). The cable is owned by XL at ID side and TM at MY side. It is just commisioned on last december.

A friend of mine is doing NAP business which makes use of BRCS. Several time ago, he told me that his BRCS-connection was lost due to a possibly cable break near its landing point at Rengit. Is it true ? Well, unfortunately, Google didn't give suggestions which lead to any possibly official announcement, either from XL or TM. A useful hint from Google leads only to an inofficial message put as a short comment at a blog of Dr. BR (surely, he is not BRCS :-D - sori pak! guyon dikit). It is also not easy to find some more details about the system on the net. Below are some facts about BRCS.

• CAPEX : about USD 10 mn
• Distance : 63 km (it shall actually be longer. Tapped to the existing cable on the way ??)
  
• Construction : 04/2007 - 11/2007
• Supplier / Contractor : n/a (NSW Submarine ?)
• Capacity : one cable, 48 core (24 XL, 24 TM ?), initially 1/STM-64

A cable break within two months of operations is certainly not a good reputation. The marketing people might have to work harder to acquire bandwith-customers in the future.