Malaysian carrier Telekom Malaysia signed a memorandum of understanding with seven Asian partners to build an undersea broadband cable system linking Southeast Asia with the US.

The carrier said the cable system would route between Malaysia and the US through Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, with branches into Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam and Vietnam.

Telekom Malaysia COO Baharum Salleh (above) said the system was meant to support the burgeoning demand for voice, IP/data and video traffic between Southeast Asia and the US. The 20,000-kilometer cable, to be known as Asia-America Gateway, would be completed in early 2008 with a minimum design capacity of 1.28 terabits.

The consortium includes REACH of Hong Kong, CAT Telecom of Thailand, Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), Singapore’s StarHub, Vietnam’s VNPT and AiTi of Brunei Darussalam.

“The proposed Asia-America Gateway will provide direct access between Southeast Asia and the US and will avoid some of the areas most prone to seismic activity,” PLDT said.

The system also has the potential to extend capacity to other locations in the Northeast and Southeast Asia, India, Australia, Africa and Europe said company representatives.

Other U.S.-Asia Transpacific cable includes:

• Pacific Crossing-1 (map): The PC-1 Cable system is comprised of four segments, two of which traverse the Pacific Ocean each containing four fiber pairs. The system currently has lit 180 Gbps with design capacity for 640 Gbps. It runs from Japan to Harbor Pointe, Washington.
• Japan-U.S. Cable Network (map): The 640 gigabits/se (4,096 STM-1s), uses 10 GigE technology. The Japan-U.S. cable has its northern landing point at Manchester, Calif., and its southern landing at Morrow Bay, Calif.
• China-U.S. Cable Network (map): The $1.4 billion China-U.S transpacific fiber represents half of China’s international Internet capacity. The China-U.S. cable has its northern landing point at Bandon, Ore. and its southern landing point at San Luis Obispo, Calif.
• Southern Cross Cable Network (map): Southern Cross has a total protected network capacity to 480 Gbps, connecting through Hawaii and terminating in the U.S. at Hillsboro, Oregon. They interconnect with the Pacific Lambda Rail in Seattle for connections to Internet2′s Abilene, with National Lambda Rail and CANARIE’s CANet4 (both of which use switched optical lightpaths).
• C2Ccn (map): A fully redundant and diversified network with a design capacity of 7.68 Tbps (equivalent to 90 million simultaneous conversations). Connects China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, with onward connectivity with the United States in Hillsboro.
• Tyco Transpacific (map): Indian national operator Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (VSNL) bought the Tyco Global Network, one of the world’s highest-capacity international submarine cable systems, for $130M in 2004. The ring system has capacity of 5.12 Tb/s, with segment 1 going from Japan to Nedonna Beach, Oregon. VSNL is the third biggest global player in the international voice market with interests in submarine cable systems FLAG, SEA-ME-WE-2 and SEA-ME-WE-3.
• TPC 5 (map): Links Japan, Guam, Hawaii and mainland USA (in Bandon, Oregon) with Tyco Transpacific.
• Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (map): India’s Reliance Group of companies bought FLAG in 2004. FLAG was the first oceanic cable to circle the earth.

India is becoming a crucial cog in the machine at IBM, says the NY Times. Bandwidth makes it happen.

China Netcom, widely seen as the number two fixed-line operator in China after China Telecom, has signed an agreement to sell Asia Netcom. Asia Netcom, headquartered in Hong Kong, provides submarine cable capacity, international data and voice services to multinational corporation and telecom carrier customers mainly in the Pan Asia-Pacific region. China Netcom is building a new broadband Internet backbone across the country.

The Hawaii Pacific Teleport operates incoming circuits supplied by Southern Cross, and uplinks them to “deep reach” satellites orbiting over Asia.

Using GEO satellites, Inmarsat’s BGAN provides service with $2,200 and $3,500 terminals using standard IP data service at speeds up to 492Kbps. IP streaming has a capacity of up to 256kbps (which is suitable for ‘live’ video feeds, say Inmarsat). One reason why Inmarsat has yet to target the Pacific maritime segment with BGAN is that the “spot beam” could not initially accommodate much in the way of movement of the antenna. A third satellite will probably be launched in 2008, addressing the coverage issue.

Thuraya provides blanket coverage to 99 countries spanning Europe, North and Central Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population using a GEO satellite. ThurayaDSL satellite IP modem offers “always on” high-speed GPRS packet data communication via Thuraya satellite.

Handheld satellite phones, using LEO satellites, provide slower data access but smaller, more convenient phones. Iridium satellite phone service recently added Direct Internet Data Service, which connects to a PC or laptop via data cable, an Iridium phone and an Iridium SIM card. This service utilizes compression, resulting in effective throughput data rates higher than the 2.4 Kbps service that Iridium’s data service normally operates at. Globalstar, with over 200,000 activated satellite voice and data units, provides satellite phone service from virtually anywhere in more than 120 countries. The Globalstar Duplex Modem delivers digital data communications virtually anywhere in the world.

Although not portable, HughesNet, Starband and WildBlue provide 2-way consumer satellite terminals in North America for remote internet access to geosynchrous satellites.

Mainland China has 416 million cellular subscribers (end of April, 2006) and is expected to hit 520 million by 2008 and 600 million by 2010

Cisco optical networking products are key to Cisco’s IP NGN, an architecture that enables service providers to migrate to and deliver services to IP-based networks. Cisco’s Reconfigurable Optical ADM (ROADM) eliminates the need for costly and complex optical to electronic conversions where the traffic simply needs to pass through a site without having to terminate on a router for IP processing.

Cisco’s CRS-1 is a carrier-class routing system that can scale up to 92 terabits per second. CRS-1 customers include BT, Cable & Wireless, Comcast, China Telecom (ChinaNet), China Education and Research Network (CERNET), SuperSINET research network in Japan, National LambdaRail, MTS Allstream, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, SaskTel, Softbank Yahoo! BB, Swisscom, Shanghai Telecom and Telstra.

Current optical computing networks make use of Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to enable multiple streams of data to flow down a single path, as each stream is assigned to a specific wavelength of light, or “lambda.” A LambdaGrid takes this optical infrastructure and makes it a switchable, schedulable resource for researchers and educators.

In other news, Singapore’s StarHub will launch a public trial of HDTV beginning on June 10th. They will carry a live telecast of all 64, 2006 FIFA World Cup matches in full HDTV.

Ubiquitous end-to-end Ethernet services across multiple networks will be a reality through the Metro Ethernet Forum. In related news, Qwest Communications is buying OnFiber, an Austin-based provider of custom-built and managed metropolitan Ethernet and wide-area network solutions, such as the one in Portland, which offers GigE direct to users. OnFiber’s network was originally built by Enron’s fiber optic division.

Covad, along with Korea Telecom, TeleKom Malaysia and PCCW are members of the WiBro and mobile WiMAX Community which plans interoperability between WiBro and Mobile WiMAX.

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Posted by Sam Churchill on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 at 6:14 am.