Brunei Gears Up For Faster Net Access

Wednesday, Feb 24, 2010

Brunei Darussalam's communication industry is set to see some big changes this year, as the government has pledged US$40 million to be part of the first direct Terabitscale underwater cable network between Southeast Asia and the US that promises to "revolutionise" bandwidth speeds and better Internet access.

The Asia-America Gateway (AAG) is the first cable system of its kind to directly link the Sultanate to the United States, consisting of a 20,000-km fibre optic cable network that will connect 10 different locations in eight countries across the Asia Pacific region.

Plans for the underwater network began back in 2006 in Hong Kong, when a consortium of major international telecommunications entities signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to plan and develop a proposal to build an international undersea cable system' linking Southeast Asia with the US.

These entities represent experienced telecommunication entities with a ready customer base in their respective domestic markets, which include AiTi of Brunei Darussalam, CAT Telecom (Thailand), PLDT (Philippines), REACH (Hong Kong), StarHub (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam).

The gateway will route between Malaysia and the USA via Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam and Hawaii, with branches into Singapore, Thailand, Brunei Darussalam and Vietnam, and hopes to provide the much needed direct access and diverse routing between South East Asia and the USA.

It possesses advantages over the traditional trans-Pacific routes in that it will avoid some of the areas most prone to seismic activity, conditions which are hazardous to undersea cables. "Brunei Darussalam is participating in building together the Asia-America Gateway or AAG submarine cable project, alongside other parties around the region and the USA.

This project represents a strategic investment that will strengthen the security, and safeguard the interest of Brunei Darussalam, by ensuring secure and continuous communication with the outside world," Dato Paduka Haji Yusof bin Hj Abd Hamid, the Deputy Minister of Communications said at the THiNKBIG National Technology Forum in 2008.

The AAG is designed to provide 1.92 Terabit per second using the field-proven dense wavelength division multiplexing technology to provide upgrade-able and feature proof transmission facilities that support Internet and e-commerce, and is also expected to meet the projected explosive growth in bandwidth requirements for new and revolutionary broadband applications such as IP, video, data and other multimedia services.

With such designs, it will be able to support about 130,000 simultaneous High Definition Television signals. And as the AAG cable network was laid out to bypass the most seismically volatile areas in the volcanic and earthquake-prone `Pacific Ring of Fire', it will indeed provide a new channel in traditional routes to the US and ensure alternate routes, expanded capacity and high levels of service during potential disasters.

Two of the main East Asia telecommunications arteries in the region, the SeaMeWe 3 (South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 3) and APCN2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network 2) undersea cables, were damaged in December 2006 following a series of powerful earthquakes off the coast of Taiwan that disrupted Asia's voice and data communications within the region and the rest of the world.

 

Source: Bru Direct