Malaysian fixed line incumbent Telekom Malaysia™ has announced that its first private international cable system, Cahaya Malaysia, has been completed. The link will service connections between Malaysia and Hong Kong, and between Hong Kong and Japan, while it has actually been carrying internet traffic between Malaysia and Japan since August last year, with the telco having reportedly completed the final leg of the cable system earlier this month.
Cahaya Malaysia is TM’s wholly owned two-fibre-pair system within the six-fibre-pair Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) system linking Malaysia to Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Singapore built in collaboration with Japan’s NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Singapore’s StarHub. Utilising 40Gbps digital coherent optical transmissions technology, Cahaya Malaysia can reach the initial design capacity of up to 10Tbps, while it has also reportedly been designed to support 100Gbps technology, which TM claims will ‘significantly increase the design capacity in the future’.
Commenting on the development, Rozaimy Rahman, executive vice-president for TM’s carrier-to-carrier business, said: ‘The landing of Cahaya Malaysia in Hong Kong, which forms the backbone in linking TM’s very own data centre, VADS Data Centre Hong Kong (VADS DCHK), with Malaysia and the rest of the world will further strengthen TM’s ever growing ICT and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) footprint outside Malaysia.’