The Hindu Business Line : Four shortlisted for Reliance undersea cable project

Reliance Communications' wholly owned subsidiary FLAG Telecom has shortlisted four global majors — NEC, Tyco, Alcatel and Fujitsu for implementing its recently announced Rs 7,000 crore next generation undersea cable project.

The move comes within three days of issuing the request for proposals under which the company had sought initial expression of interest from as many as 12 global players across the world. The project envisages laying 50,000 km of optical fibre cable over the next three years.

A FLAG spokesperson when contacted declined to comment on the specifics of the process but said, "We are ahead of the stiff deadlines and aspire to complete the NGN project of this magnitude in a record time."

A meeting has been called for next week at Mumbai during which the company would hold discussions regarding the technological deployment, deadlines as well as the project cost.

The contract is likely to be awarded to one of the four bidders by the end of this month in order to commence the on-ground implementation by March. The cables would be rolled as deep as 10 km below sea level by the time the deep water survey of the 50,000-km route is completed.

FLAG plans to lay undersea cables in countries where there is little or no bandwidth currently available for which shallow and deep water surveys need to be undertaken, industry sources said. The cable will strengthen India's position in owning undersea cable systems across the world.

On December 28, Mr Anil Ambani unveiled plans under which FLAG targeted to reach out to five billion customers across the globe.

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