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SingTel among investors in S$375m trans-Pacific cable system venture

SINGAPORE —SingTel said yesterday it is investing US$300 million (S$375 million) jointly with a group of Asian telecommunications companies and Google to lay a trans-Pacific cable system between Japan and the United States, addressing increasing traffic demand for broadband, mobile, applications, content and enterprise data exchange on this route.

When completed, the network — slated to have the largest design capacity built across the trans-Pacificroute — will be able to transmit an equivalent of 12,000 high-definition movies every second across the Pacific Ocean.

The new cable system, scheduled to be completed by the second quarter of 2016, will connect the US to Chikura and Shima in Japan. Connections in America will extend the system to major hubs across the west coast, covering Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

Besides SingTel and Google, the consortium behind the FASTER cable network comprises China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit and KDDI. NEC Corporation will be the system supplier.

The name FASTER was adopted to “represent the cable system’s purpose of rapidly serving traffic demands”, said SingTel in a statement yesterday.

The system will boast the latest six-fibre-pair cable and optical transmission technologies, with an initial capacity of 60 terabits per second, it added.

Mr Ooi Seng Keat, vice-president of Carrier Services at SingTel Group Enterprise, said: “SingTel is pleased to be part of a consortium that is constructing one of the highest-capacity cable systems to be built. It will facilitate the delivery of broadband-heavy applications, video and content to meet the future needs of consumers and enterprises.”

Earlier this year, SingTel also joined a consortium to build an undersea cable system that will connect 17 countries such as Singapore, Saudi Arabia, France and Italy. It is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by early 2016.

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