TM inks MoU with Time dotCom for new 3,500km submarine cable

KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd has inked an MoU with TIME Dotcom Bhd to build a 3,500km submarine cable system called Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1 Malaysia enhancing the connectivity among Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.

TM said on Tuesday the project, which was awarded by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) on Dec 30, 2014, would be jointly carried out by MCMC and TM.

The new submarine cable system will have an initial capacity of 4 Terabit per second (Tbps).

The cable project would be undertaken through a public-private partnership (PPP) arrangement between MCMC and TM utilising the Universal Services Provision Fund (USP), which is under the purview of MCMC.

“In the spirit of supporting the government’s aspiration in fostering partnerships amongst industry players, TM is partnering up with Time to jointly deploy the SKR1M cable system with the establishment of the SKR1M Consortium,” it said.

TM added after the signing of the MoU and the formation of the consortium, the parties would go ahead with the tender exercise to determine the preferred technology partner to supply, deliver and implement the SKR1M network.

According to the Dec 30 statement issued by TM, SKR1M will enhance the existing domestic submarine cable connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak thus catering for future bandwidth growth requirements. 

This huge bandwidth will improve the user experience by minimising potential traffic congestion between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. 

In addition, this also allows further growth in bandwidth-hungry as well as Internet-based applications to flow between these areas smoothly.

TM owns more than 10 submarine cable systems, which span more than 100,000 fiber route miles around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between Asia-Pacific region and North American region.