Omantel announced that it inked an agreement for another submarine cable, the 'Bay of Bengal Gateway' submarine cable system (BBG).
This new submarine cable will enhance the robustness and reliability of international connectivity between Oman and the rest of the world through another direct connection to Singapore, with additional landing points in UAE, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.
The BBG collaboration was made official on Saturday when consortium members - Omantel, Telekom Malaysia Berhad (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Etisalat (UAE), Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd (India) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka) - signed the consortium agreement in Kuala Lumpur earlier.
According to a press release, the construction of this cable system is a clear indication of the growing demand for bandwidth in the participating countries. These markets are expected to see strong growth with the continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion.
The BBG cable system will span approximately 8,000km and connect six countries via landing points in Barka (Oman), Fujairah (UAE), Mumbai and Chennai (India), Rathmalana (Sri Lanka), and Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore.
Commercial operation of BBG is planned to start by end of the fourth quarter of 2014. It will offer an ultimate design capacity of 28 Tbit/s and is designed to provide upgradable transmission facilities by adopting the state-of-the-art 100 Gbit/s technology, underpinning the continued growth of new applications and services in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East.
Dr Amer al Rawas, chief executive of Omantel, said, "BBG will complement our existing submarine cable network by providing diversity and additional capacity to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. Together with our EPEG cable from Oman (terrestrial route over Iran and Russia to Frankfurt), Omantel will be able to offer redundant routed capacity with superior quality and the lowest latency between Singapore and Frankfurt. This is a unique value proposition to our international customers."
