Connecting Malaysia with the rest of the world

IN 1882, a “revolution” in telecommunications technology in the then pre-Malaya days took place to bring Penangites closer with Perak.

A mere six years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, telephone users in Perak and Penang island were linked via a simple cable laid across the seabed of the Penang Strait, heralding the first “cross strait” voice communication, and the beginning of many more subsea or submarine communications installations.