MANILA, Philippines - The global consortium of telecommunication companies formed to build and operate the South-East Asia Japan Cable (SJC) system has started the construction of the project that will link Brunei, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Japan and Singapore, with options to extend to Indonesia and Thailand.
The SJC consortium has awarded the supply contract for the new international submarine cable system to two companies.
First announced in December 2009, the cable was initially planned to span 8,300 kilometers (km) in length, linking five countries/ territories. SJC’s length is now 8,900 km which could extend up to 10,700 km, linking up to eight countries/territories while supporting an initial design capacity of over 15 terabits per second.
The SJC consortium is composed of Globe Telecom, Brunei International Gateway Sendirian Berhad (BIG), China Mobile, China Telecommunications Corp. (China Telecom) and its affiliate China Telecom (Hong Kong) International Ltd. (CTHKI), Donghwa Telecom Co. Ltd., Google SJC Bermuda Ltd. (a subsidiary of Google Inc.), KDDI Corp., Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel), PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), Telemedia Pacific Inc. (TPI) and TOT Public Co. Ltd. (TOT).
With the strength of the investors to the project, the SJC will bring more available bandwidth to Asia to support future applications and next-generation technologies.
“The SJC is carefully designed to serve as many direct circuits between the landing points/POPs and is routed nearer the northern part of the Philippines, thereby avoiding an area that is frequently stricken by earthquakes. The SJC will enable members of the consortium to meet the growing demands of the region, not just for increased Internet usage, but bandwidth intensive applications such as Internet TV, games and enterprise data exchange,” Ooi Seng Keat, chairman of the SJC executive committee, said.
The SJC consortium signed an agreement with TE SubCom and NEC Corp. to supply and install the system based on their decades of combined experience, technology superiority and extensive record of on-time and on-budget project completions. The SJC system is expected to be ready for service in the second half of 2013.
“We are very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the deployment of the SJC system and anticipate that, once completed, SJC will have a significant and measurable impact on bandwidth, enhancing how the entire region interacts and communicates with the rest of the world,” said Mike Rieger, vice president of sales for SubCom. “We thank each member of the SJC consortium for their trust and support and look forward to the completion of this landmark project utilizing SubCom’s state of the art advanced 40G SLTE and OADM branching units.”
“We congratulate the purchasers on this occasion and look forward to building the Southeast-Asia Japan Cable System,” said Osamu Harada, general manager of NEC’s Submarine Network Division. “We are very proud that with this new cable, we will be able to contribute to the economies of Asia and its vicinity. NEC will continue to dedicate its strength to the development of telecommunication infrastructure in these and other countries across the globe.”