The Hindu Business Line : VSNL begins work on undersea cable project

VIDESH Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL) today started work on laying the 3,175-km undersea optical fibre cable from Chennai to Singapore. The work is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2004. Fully lit, the cable will give VSNL a bandwidth capacity of 5.12 terabits.

Addressing a press conference on board the CS Tyco Durable, the ship that will lay the cable for about 2,000 km, Mr N. Srinath, Director (Operations), VSNL, said the company had tied up for undersea cable bandwidth between Singapore and Japan, and was in negotiations with some companies for similar capacity between Japan and the US.

He declined to disclose how much money would be spent on the Chennai-Singapore submarine cable project on grounds that it was competitive information. However, to a question, he replied that the cost would be "significantly lower" than what Bharti group had spent on a similar cable between Chennai and Singapore. (A Bharti-SingTel joint venture had spent $259 million on the Chennai-Singapore submarine cable using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology. The cable has a capacity of 8.4 terabits.)

The cable is being laid by Tyco Telecommunications of the US. The entire cable laying work is expected to take about three months and is being done using three ships, according to Mr Robert S.C. Munier, Managing Director, Global System Sales, Tyco Telecommunications.

Mr Srinath said VSNL had bandwidth on all the five undersea cable systems coming into the country. This included over 10 gbps on its four operational systems besides capacity on i2i, the Bharti-SingTel company.

Bandwidth demand in the country was increasing rapidly and VSNL wanted to have its own submarine cable so that it could offer bandwidth to customers at competitive rates.

To questions, he said bandwidth prices were coming down significantly and this would stimulate demand. VSNL hoped to recover its investment in the Chennai-Singapore submarine cable project in two to three years.

The undersea cable, he said, would support VSNL's international operations as it would give the company the ability to sell bandwidth to its customers globally. Also, VSNL would have better control over service level agreements with its customers thanks to its own undersea cable. VSNL's potential customers included corporates, Internet service providers and telecom companies, he said.

More Stories on : Telecommunications | Broadband

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
VSNL begins work on undersea cable project