KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd
has signed a construction and maintenance agreement with a unit of TIME Dotcom Bhd for a new submarine cable system, Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1 Malaysia (SKR1M).
SKR1M will link Peninsular Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak and it will use the latest 100Gbps wavelength technology with initial capacity of 4 Terabit per second (Tbps) and upgradeable to a minimum of 12.8Tbps. It is a two fibre pair cable system with an estimated total length of 3,500 km.
The establishment of this new submarine cable system is part of the government’s initiatives to increase the capacity of high-speed broadband.
The 20-year agreement between TIME’s unit TT dotcom Sdn Bhd (TTdC) and TM will see both parties working together to undertake the cable system.
Both companies also pledged to operate and maintain the SKR1M network for the lifetime of the cable system including funding all fault repairs.
TM executive vice president, global & wholesale Rozaimy Abd. Rahman said: “We view this collaboration as a positive move in paving the way to enabling enhanced customer experience when they access high-bandwidth digital content, high definition video streaming or run real-time applications via their devices.”
Rozaimy said the SKR1M cable system development was also in line with the efforts to replace TM’s aging Malaysian Domestic Submarine Cable System (MDSCS) which had been in service since 1995.
Currently, MDSCS is already carrying 400Gbps, slightly over 10% of the new SKR1M initial equipage and is facing technological obsolescence, thus limiting its capability to support the growing domestic capacity demand.
TM said the SKR1M would enhance the existing domestic submarine cable connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak, thus catering for future bandwidth growth requirement.
Its huge bandwidth will improve Malaysians’ Internet experience by minimising potential traffic congestion between Peninsular Malaysia, and Sabah and Sarawak.
The new cable system also enables further growth of bandwidth-hungry as well as internet-based applications.
This new submarine cable system is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by mid 2017.
TM owns more than 12 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.
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