SingTel, KDDI others partner to build USD300m US-Japan submarine cable

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) is partnering with KDDI Corp (Japan), Google Inc (US), Pacific Internet (Singapore), Bharti Airtel (India) and Globe Transit to build the USD300 million submarine cable, dubbed Unity, connecting Japan to the United States. The 10,000km ultra-high speed cable is scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2010. ‘This new submarine cable network, with its high capacity and resilient transmission infrastructure, will be able to meet the strong demand for data, e-commerce and internet traffic between Asia and the US,’ said SingTel’s executive vice-president for networks, Mark Chong. NEC Corp and Tyco Telecommunications have been jointly awarded the contract to implement the cable system, SingTel said. The new cable will utilise dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology and will be capable of supporting up to 960Gbps per fibre-optic pair, with a maximum of eight fibre pairs. It will be constructed with a potential design capacity of up to 7.68Tbps, making it one of the highest capacity links of its type.