SEACOM

SEACOM:

• Investors: Herakles (backed by Blackstone); Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (founded by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV of Pakistan) through IPS; Venfin (led by South African Johann Rupert); Convergence Partners (led by former South African DoC DG Andile Ngcaba); Shanduka (led by South African Cyril Ramaphosa); Neotel (has pledged ZAR 20 million for cable station)
• CAPEX/Cost : approx. USD 650 mn
• RFS : June 2009
• Financing arranged by Nedbank and Investec
• Suppliers/Contractors : Tyco
• Length 15,000 km
• Links Southern and East Africa, Europe and South Asia
• Capacity : 2 FP, 1.28 Tbps design
  

Source SEACOM/Terabit

• "The connectivity from Egypt to Marseille, France, will be provided through Telecom Egypt's TE-North fibre pairs that SEACOM has purchased on the system. TE-North is a new cable currently being laid across the Mediterranean Sea"
• "SEACOM, which is privately funded and over three quarter African owned, will assist communication carriers in south and east Africa through the sale of wholesale international capacity to global networks via India and Europe"
• "SEACOM will be the first cable to provide broadband to countries in east Africa which, at the moment, rely entirely on expensive satellite connections"
  

• "When it is fully functional in 2009, SEACOM will be a service provider of international fibre optic bandwidth along the east coast of Africa linking South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia to India and Europe"

• SEACOM is 76.25% African owned by: Industrial Promotion Services (26.25%), an arm of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development; Venfin Limited (25%); Convergence Partners (12.5%) ; Shanduka Group (12.5%)
• The remaining 23.75% is held by Herakles Telecom LLC

Main One

MAIN One is a private cable system currently under construction; owned by Main Street Technologies: "led by Ms. Funke Opeke, who worked as an executive at Verizon, as the chief technology officer at MTN, and as chief operating officer of Nitel from late-2006 to early-2007".

• Branched system from Portugal to Angola
• Contractors/Suppliers : Tyco; contract awarded on April 2008
• CAPEX: USD 300 mn
• RfS: May 2010
• Length : 12,900 km
  

• Reportedly considering an extension to South Africa, but company representatives said that they were “a little disappointed with the South African Government’s attitude” toward foreign operators.
• The Phase 1 cable system will span 6,900 km and provide the much needed high capacity for international and internet connectivity to countries between Portugal and the West coast of Africa
• The submarine cable project is designed in two phases, with the second phase extending connectivity another 6,000 km to South Africa
• The dual fiber pair, 1.28 Terabits per second, Dense Wave Division Multiplex project will connect Nigeria, Ghana and Portugal in the first phase with onward connectivity through Portugal to Europe, Asia and the Americas; and extends to Angola and South Africa in the second phase
• The Main One Cable system will provide open access to regional telecom operators and Internet Service Providers at competitive rates that are less than 20% of current SAT-3 or Satellite international bandwidth prices in the region
  

Source/Courtesy Terabit/Main Street Tech.

TEAMS

TEAMS (The East African Marine System) is a point-to-point system connecting Mombasa, Kenya and Fujairah, UAE. It was initially proposed by Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) in 2006.

• Supply contract awarded to ASN in October, 2007
• CAPEX : USD 82 mn
• Revised ownership, as of 2008: Gov’t. of Kenya (20%); UAE incumbent Etisalat (15%); Earmark for “Private Telecommunications Operators” (65%) -- Interested: Safaricom, UUNet, Access Kenya, Jamii Telecom
• Investors assuming 5% equity would pay USD 214/Mb/mo. for wet plant between Mombasa and Fujairah
  
• Onward connectivity from Fujairah to Europe or USA would be USD 55k to USD 100k per STM-1 per year, according to Kenyan gov’t
• RFS : ??
• Capacity : ??

Credits: M Ruddy/Terabit

*Update*
Quotes from Telegeography 11/03/2009

Eleven shareholders in The East African Marine Cable (TEAMS) international undersea cable project have signed an agreement to plough USD110 million into the fibre-optic link, while the Kenyan government has pledged another USD20 million. The government, Telkom Kenya and Safaricom each hold 20% in the TEAMS project, while Kenya Data Networks and Econet Wireless have 10% each. Other investors include Wananchi Online (5%) and Jamii Telkom (3.75%). Another five companies plan on buying a 1.25% stake each, while the remaining 5% has yet to be allocated, Reuters reports. The installation of the cable, which will link Mombasa in Kenya to Fujairah in the UAE, is due to begin later this month and is scheduled to be complete by June.

Quotes from Subtelforum 11/03/2009

Reuters Africa is reporting that eleven shareholders of The East African Marine Cable (TEAMS) have agreed to contribute $110 million to the project. The Kenyan government will contribute an additional $20 million. Major shareholders include Telkom Kenya, Safaricom, Econet Wireless, Kenya Data Networks, Wananchi Online and Jamii Telkom.

Bitange Ndemo of the Kenyan Information and Communications Ministry said that TEAMS is on track for completion in June.

EASSy

East African Submarine cable System (EASSy) was proposed by a consortium of regional (east African) operators.

• CAPEX : USD 265 mn; Financing from Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) including World Bank/IFC, EIB, ADB, AFD, KfW
• RfS: 2009
• Contractors: ASN
• Length: approx. 10,000 km
  
• Capacity: 1.4 Tbps design (after contract revisions); lit ?
  
• Linking eight countries from Sudan to South Africa, via Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique; Landings will be located in Port Sudan (Sudan), Djibouti (Djibouti), Mogadishu (Somalia) Mombasa (Kenya), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Toliary (Madagascar), Maputo (Mozambique) and Mtunzini (South Africa)

Source/Courtesy Terabit/EASSy

Intra-Asia Cables

Some times ago, I'd tried to find out more about Pacnet's EAC-C2C cables. It was not easy since both EAC and C2C are mature systems that operated since more than 6 years ago and that the ownership was changed several times. I found an interresting talk given by Yves Poppe at APAN meeting oneday in 2006: i.e. he addressed 3 "east Asian telecommunication aortas" :

• EAC (East Asia Crossing) : design capacity --> 2.56 Tbps; RFS Jan 2001
• APCN-2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network - 2): design capacity --> 2.56 Tbps; RFS Dec 2001
• C2C (City to City): design capacity --> 7.68 Tbps; RFS Dec 2001
  

As reported by several media, Pacnet (formerly ANC) currently owns and operates both EAC and C2C. ANC took over EAC in January 2003.

3 Telecommunication Aortas in East Asia (Source Telegeography; taken from Yves Poppe's Talk) -- seems it is a typo: C2C <----> APCN2

i2i (Cable Network)

i2i stands for India to International. It is the first private cable to directly link India and Singapore. i2i was planned as a cable network spanning 10,800 km which would approximately be cost USD 650 mn. Phase 1 of i2i cable development covered a linear link between Chennai - Tuas and a terrestrial link between Chennai and Mumbai. What about Phase 2 or beyond ? This should include a submarine cable link between Mumbai and Singapore. Does anybody know?

• Contractors/Suppliers :ASN
• Repeatered system, 64
• Capacity 8 FP; 8.4 Tbps; 105 Lambdas; 10 Gbps; initial 160 Gbps
• Length 3,200 km
• Landing Points : Chennai (Madras) India, Tuas Singapore
• Owners: Bharti, SingTel
• CAPEX USD 250 mn
• RFS / Commercial Traffic: May 2002
• Contract Award: October 2000
• Construction : late 2000 - April 2002
• Wholesale capacity is available in STM-1, -4, -16, and -64 levels; 10-Gbit/sec wavelengths; and dark fiber, which can support 40-960 Gbits/sec.
  
• It was a plan to branch to Medan ?? (see below - at that time, Indosat would not let this happened :-D )
  
• A terrestrial link between Chennai and Mumbai (2,000 km - inlcudes in Phase-1 / USD 250 mn??)

i2icn - Phase 1 (Source/Courtesy ASN)

Another version (source Apman):

i2icn (Source Apman)

• Length : 3,200 km
• Capacity : 8,400 Gbps ; (8 fp x 105 wl @ 10 Gbps)
• RFS : 2001

Tata Indicom Cable (TIC)

TIC belongs to the first cable systems which are fully owned and operated from the beginning (not acquired) by VSNL/Tata. TIC is also known as TIISCS (Tata Indicom India-Singapore Cable System). Several facts:

• Capacity : 320 Gbps lit; 5.12 Tbps design; 8 FPs; 96 Lambdas @ 10 Gbps
• Feature : HW and wavelength protection on wet segment; leading SLAs; linked directly to Tata's redundant network in India; onward connectivity from SG to Hongkong, Tokyo and USA
• Construction : 11/2003 - 9/2004; deep shore-end burial; ring-protected backhaul in SG
• Length : 3,175 km
• RFS since : late 2004
• CAPEX : ??
  
• Suppliers : Tyco ??
  
• CLP : Chennai, Changi (backhauled to Global Switch; Tai Seng Avenue)
• #BU : 4 (currently all stubs)

TIC Route (Source/Courtesy Tata)

Trans-Pacific Express (2)

The first phase of TPE (Trans Pacific Express) cable is just ready for service!

Some updates (see the other older post) :

• "Originally announced as a 5.12 terabit system in December 2006, the cable system has increased in capacity, and when fully deployed when phase two is completed, TPE will be a 6 terabit submarine cable system" (Submarine Cable News); 6.4 Tbps I guess
• Suppliers: Tyco (prime); ASN; NEC
• "With the addition of NTT Communications, the TPE cable system will add a submarine cable link to Japan giving the TPE cable system six landing sites"
• "The operating capacity of the system is 3.2 Tbps, an increase of 25 percent over the original system design. With a minimum 80 wavelengths per fiber, TPE has the highest wave-density of any submarine cable in the world at this length."
  

AT&T (Submarine Cable News)

“We are excited that the first phase of the Trans-Pacific Express is complete and ready for our customers’ use,” said Kaveh Hushyar, senior vice president of network planning and engineering for AT&T. “AT&T today carries more than 15.8 petabytes of IP and data traffic on an average business day, and this traffic volume is growing at more than 50 percent year over year. Our participation in the TPE network helps to ensure that we’re continually staying several steps ahead of our customers’ ever-growing global communications needs.”

AT&T owns or leases capacity on more than 80 submarine cable systems, which span more than 478,000 fiber-route miles (approx. 760,000 km) around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between the Asia-Pacific region and North America.

Verizon

Verizon Business multinational customers with IP, data and voice communications traffic moving onto this cable system, which is now active, will see immediate benefits including additional capacity, greater physical diversity, reduced latency, improved performance and seven-way mesh network diversity, the company said in a statement.

In addition to the physical diversity of the TPE submarine cable route, customers also will take advantage of a network architecture design called meshing, which provides alternate paths for rerouting traffic in the event of a cable cut or network disruption. When a service interruption occurs and meshing is needed, the equipment housed in network buildings on land allows the rerouting of voice and data traffic within 50 to 100 milliseconds. (Finally, a commercial submarine mesh restoration, Cool!)

As a leader in global mesh networks, Verizon Business is the first to offer seven-way trans-oceanic mesh diversity across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The company’s mesh network in northern Asia includes physical node diversity in major cities, coupled with backhaul and cable system diversity to provide superior survivability during network issues. Mesh nodes were recently installed in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan. Japan was already included in the Pacific global mesh network.

“When you combine the complete TPE package we are offering our Verizon Business multinational customers, it’s second to none in the industry”

TPE Route (Courtesy TPE Consortium? ; Taken from Tata/Byron Clatterbuck)

SJC Plan

Southeast-asia Japan Cable (SJC) is currently in the planning stage. This second Google-led cable initiative will extend Unity cable to Southeast Asia.

• RFS: earliest 2011 (Alan Mauldin's estimate)
• Corsortium members: Google, Bharti, SingTel, KDDI, Global Transit (all these companies are also member of Unity Japan-US)
• Consortium members (SJC only): Globe Telecom Philippines, TOT Thailand
• Contractors/suppliers: ??? the same as Unity ???
• Current status: planning stage; preparation of supply contract
• CAPEX ???
  

Southeast-asia Japan Cable (SJC) Plan (Source/Courtesy Telegeography)

Several things are for me questionable:

• Why shall the cable land in Tuas ? This is usually used for cable coming from the west; as a preparation to extend to South Asia or just a Telegeography's typo ?
• Global Transit's HQ is in KL, but there is no Malaysian leg of the cable??
  

Additionally, Commsday said:

• "Google is reportedly looking for partners for the construction of a new subsea cable connecting to Africa"; (link eastwards to Asia or northwards to Europe is unclear but CAPEX estimate is revealed i.e. approx. USD 80 mn)
• "The SCJ will link to PPC-1"; "The cable would allow Pipe to provide direct capacity from Australia to Japan and the US at a substantial discount given likely pricing trends and presents new competition for AJC and a number of other emerging east asian systems planned by the likes of Pacnet, Reliance and Tata"
  

Google's Africa cable would be a hint; I guess extending the cable from SG to Africa would be a bit cheaper while covering traffic to/from South Asia and Middle East. Second, it was for me a surprise that Pipe which closely cooperates with Tata will also indirectly involve in this Google project :-). You might want to see this Tata's cable.

PPC-1 (Pipe Pacific Cable-1)

PPC-1 is owned (via its subsidiaries) by PIPE Networks, which is claimed itself as "Australia's largest peering provider and operates 16 IX points in 6 cities with over 130 active connections". PIPE has a close partnership with VSNL(Tata), in particular as the company intends to expand its business to the international wholesale market.

• Contractors: Tyco (contract on January 2008)
• Landing points: Collaroy beach, Cromer Sydney (Aus), Madang (PNG) near SEACOM, Tata Piti TGNP Guam (US)
• Capacity: 2 FP (4 in segment Cromer CLS - BU Sydney??); 1 FP for Australia-Guam trunk, 1 FP for Australia-PNG-Guam, 1.92 Tbps design, 140 Gbps initial for Australia-Guam, 10 Gbps for the other trunk; 96 Lambdas @ 10 Gbps
  
• Length: Approx. 6,900 km
• Others: 4 BU (1 Passive off Sydney; 3 Active/OADM)
• Products: 2.5 Gbps unprotected wavelengths; 10 Gbps unprotected wavelengths; SDH; dark fiber
• Cable burial: 1.5m burial to 2km off Sydney; 1m burial to 1km off Madang
• CAPEX:
• RFS: July 2009
  

• "PPC-1 is the first 'new' cable to land in PNG since 1960's"
• Connections from Guam to other destination are facilitated by Tata
• PPC-2 will extend PPC-1 to the North Island of NZ (partnership with Kordia)

PPC-1 (Source/Courtesy: Brett Worrall/PIPE Intl. taken from Subtel)

Intra-Asia & Transpacific Cables

According to Byron Clatterbuck (Tata), current supply for transpacific connection is as follows:

TGN-Pacific

• Capacity: 8 FP; 96 channels at 10 Gbps each; 1.4 Tbps lit; 7.8 Tbps design
• Owner: Tata/TGN

JUSCN

• Capacity: 4 FP; 1.28 Tbps lit & design (full occupied) ??
• Owner: Consortium

PC-1

• Capacity: 4 FP; 320 Gbps lit; 1.28 Tbps design
• Owner: (same owner as Southern Cross??)

How about intra-Asia segments? There are also many alternatives. This includes EAC-C2C (Pacnet), IAC, TIC, Flag (FNAL). There might be also several other systems.

Tata currently expands their intra-Asia presences by constructing TGN-Intra Asia (TGN-IA):

• Length: approx. 6,800 km
• Capacity: 4 FP; 320 Gbps lit; 3.84 Tbps design
• Services: STM1/4/16/64 - GbE?
• RFS: Q3/2008
• Contractors: Tyco ?

TGN IA (Intra Asia) and TGN Pacific - Source/Courtesy: Tata

A (Possibly) New Competitor for Matrix and Jakabare

A competitor or a friend ? :-) It could actually be a potential partner if you want to connect to Western Australia!

I don't remember precisely how, but yesterday my Firefox browser took me to Ochre's website. Honestly, I've never heard Ochre before, so I was a bit surprised; similar to the moment where I read about the MCS project for the first time.

Facts, Plans & Quotes (Brett O’Riley, Subtelforum):

• It will connect Singapore (possibly Changi), Jakarta and Perth
• "The proposed multi-terabit network would link Perth to Jakarta and Singapore, with initial branches to oil and gas facilities at Geraldton and Dampier"
  
• RFS : Q2/2010
• Capacity : 2 FP; channels ? design ? lit ?
• CAPEX : approx. USD 150 mn
• The project is "modelled on an earlier project mooted by Nava Networks that was abandoned following the 2002 market collapse"
• "It was confirmed that Asia Netcom had agreed to provide landing stations in Singapore" (ANC --> PACNET)
• "While only 10% of Australia’s international traffic originates on the west coast, service providers have become increasingly concerned about the lack of diversity and the high prices available on the current SEA-ME-WE-3 link"
  

Ochre's SIA (Singapore Indonesia Australia) Cable Plan; Courtesy of Ochre Services

Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) Cable System

TPE (Trans-Pacific Express) is claimed to be "the first next-generation undersea optical cable system directly linking the US and China" and "the first major undersea system to land on the US West Coast in more than seven years". TPE will have a more than 60 times the overall capacity of the existing cable directly linking the US and China, and thus it will be a major enhancement to the current cable systems between these nations.

TPE links China (Chongming and Qingdao), South Korea, Taiwan, and USA (Nedonna Beach). TPE is owned by a joint venture (ownership is evently split) between 6 telcos: China Telecom, China Netcom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, Korea Telecom, Verizon Communications, AT&T and NTT (the two latest joined in 03/2008).

• Consortium agreement: early 2007 ?
• CAPEX : USD 500 mn
• Length : approx. 17,700 km (11,000 miles)
• RFS : August (Q3) 2008 ??
• Capacity : 5.12 Tbps design, 1.28 Tbps initial (other source 2.56 Tbps); 10 Gbps channel; FP? Lambdas?; customers may utilize individual connections running at 10 Gbps

If TPE and AAG are completed, AT&T shall be the first large company having capacity on both systems. And if they have connections from China/Taiwan to Phillipines/Guam they may offer survivable transpacific connection services earlier than PACNET EAC-Pacific. True??

Source/Courtesy TPE Consortium?, taken from Wikipedia

Bandwidth "Under Water"

As Asia NetCom (currently PACNET) introduced its idea for EAC Pacific one or two years ago, they underlined the fact that due to underserved routes from South and South-East Asia, Japan-US connections have become a bottleneck. They have shown a picture similar to one below. It has attracted my attention since it split Asia into three regions together with their connectivity parameters. At least, it was something different than we might see in the free version of TeleGeography's reports/databases :-D CMIIW!

After a closer look at the given bandwidth figures and comparing with other publications (TeleGeography etc.), I have to conclude that it isn't real i.e. ANC possibly gave the capacity based on design numbers (fully equiped system). Right ?? Wrong ??

What is actually in the water ? The second pic gives us a hint for trans-pacific segment based on information provided by REACH.

Unity Cable System

Unity is a new multi-terabit transpacific cable system with Google's taste :-D As you can see at this post, I've misunderstood that EAC Pacific would completely be a new transpac cable. It shall actually be a part of the Unity cable. To my knowledge, there are currently three competing parties offering new Asia-US connections:

• Trans-Pacific Express (TPE) : Verizon's Taste :-)
• Asia America Gateway (AAG)
• Unity : PACNET, Google etc.

Any other planned cables ?

Some public information about Unity:

• It connects Los Angeles, US to Chikura, Japan
• Length : approx. 10,000km
• Contractors: NEC Corp. + Tyco Telecommunications; the contract was signed on February 23, 2008.
• Members of Unity consortium : Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, Google, KDDI, Pacnet and SingTel
• CAPEX: approx. USD 300 mn
• RFS: Q1/2010
• Capacity: up to 8 FPs (recently deployed only 5 ?; 2 FP owned by PACNET); 96 Lambdas @ 10 Gbps (design); lit ?

Unity Route Map (Source/Courtesy Unity, NEC corp.)

New Asian/Transpacific Submarine Cables

In addition to AAG, several new cable systems in/via Asia are developed (just commissioned or currently under construction). This includes :

• Trans-Pacific Express (US-China)
• FLAG NGN (Intra-Asia, Intra-Africa, Mediterranean, Trans-Pacific)
• IMEWE/TIC (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Europe)
• East Asia Crossing (EAC) Extension
  

From a certain point of view EAC transpacific might offer a better network robustness than AAG since it uses two separate routes to connect to the US (something similar to the Apollo cable system for Transatlantic connection). Some other information about the EAC extension:

• Transpacific ring system connecting South East Asia (the Phillipines) directly to the US
• Configuration: Design capacity 2.56Tbps; initial capacity 200Gbps; 4 FPs, DWDM
• RFS: July 2008 ?
  

Courtesy EAC, Taken from George McLaughlin, APAN

National and Regional RENs

Actually since a long time ago I want to write threads about RENs (Research and Education Networks). Why? Simply because they were the origin of the current Internet and they still have a major role in creating advances in networking technologies. This time I would not start with an indonesian case (if INHERENT or Jardiknas can be categorized as a National REN/NREN), but with european cases.

BWiN, GWiN and SurfNET

GWiN Connectivity and Traffic Statistics

Each country in Europe has one or more NRENs. These are connected at a higher level with regional european RENs. Some of you might already heard about TEN-155 or currently GEANT/GEANT2; these are RENs at european level. At country level, Germany for instance has formerly BWiN (Breitband Wissenschaftnetz), GWiN (Gigabit Wissenschaftnetz) and currenly XWiN (X Wissenschaftnetz :-)). Other examples: France has RENATER, Holland has SurfNET, UK has Janet and UKnet?. During my dissertation several years ago, I used intensively these networks to measure, calculate and simulate performance of my approaches and algorithms.

These RENs are active and very dynamic since they are intended to fascilitate research on advance networking technologies and their applications. We may take a look the case of the RE networking (r)evolution in Germany:

First Generation (1989/1990) --> X.25-WiN

• 64 kbps in core; 2.5 - 64 kbps access
• X.25 technology
• 1990 upgraded to 2 Mbps (core and access)

Second Generation (1995-1999) --> BWiN

• 155 Mbps in core; 4.8 kbps - 155 Mbps access
• ATM technology
  

Third Generation (2000-2005) --> GWiN

• 10 Gbps in core; 128 kbps - 10 Gbps access
• PoS technology
  

Fourth Generation (2006-) --> XWiN

• heterogeneous technologies based on recent advances in optical transmission/networking

At a glance, from my point of view, XWiN takes the NLR (National Lambda Rail) model to some extent.

Asia America Gateway AAG (2)

One day in 2007 George McLaughlin has mentioned AAG as a possible infrastructure for supporting future Asian networks (APAN - in the context of RENs). It shall at the begin this year a decision whether or not APAN acquires a stake in the consortium. Since the Hengchun's earthquake many people see AAG as a potential infrastructure for increasing network reliability between (South/South-East) Asia and the USA, since it uses different routes than the usual Asia-US submarine cables. AAG also plays an important and strategic role that it can be extended to other countries/continents, thus increasing network reliability at a global scale (see the pic below).

How is the status of AAG currently ? I've found several new things, but not much :-)

• CAPEX : USD 550 mn (update to this post)
• "The Philippine leg of Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable system landed in the northern province of La Union" (this happened several times ago; PLDT contributes USD 50 mn for this project)
• RFS Q4/2008, commercial traffic early 2009
  

AAG - Map and Possible Extensions

AAG West Portion (REACH)

Cable Crossings at Hongkong Landing Point (South Lantau?)

TIS Cable

TIS stands for Thailand Indonesia Singapore. As indicated by the name, it is an optical submarine cable spanning from Songkhla (Thailand) to Batam (Indonesia) via Changi (Singapore). TIS cable was the first submarine cable project of PT. Telkom.

• Operated since December 2003
• Length: approx. 1,100 km
• Owners: consortium of SingTel, CAT Telecom, and PT. Telkom
• CAPEX: USD 36 mio.
• Capacity: design 320 Gbps, initial 30 Gbps
• Contractor: NEC Corp.
• Construction: 11/2002-12/2003
• Repeatered and unrepeatered system
  

DMCS

Dumai Melaka Cable System (DMCS) is owned jointly by PT. Telkom and Telekom Malaysia. This was the second submarine cable project of PT. Telkom after the TIS (Thailand Indonesia Singapore) cable.

• Length approx. 160 km
• Contractor : NEC Corp.
• Capacity : design 320 Gbps, initial 20 Gbps protected (10 Gbps channels, 16 Lambdas, 2 FP)
• Unrepeatered system
• CAPEX : USD 9.3 - 11 mio.
• Construction: 06/2004 - 12/2004, official RfS 17/02/2005