THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Vietnam telcos to join Asia undersea cable project

Vietnam telcos to join Asia undersea cable project

Vietnam has agreed in principle to allow its three telecom giants Vietnam Post and Telecommunications Group (VNPT), Viettel and CMC TI, to participate in a US$450 million international project to lay a 10,000-kilometre undersea Internet cable, according t

 

The Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), which will run directly from Malaysia to South Korea with links branching off to other countries, aims to improve internet speeds in the region.
Apart from VNPT, Viettel and CMC TI, other participating telcos in the region include Facebook, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom (China), Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), KT and LG (South Korea), NTT (Japan), StarHub (Singapore), Time dotcom (Malaysia) and PLDT (Philippines).
The project, which was previously called Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) before the participation of Facebook led to the ASE re-branding, will be completed by the third quarter of 2014.
The total investment is estimated at $450 million, of which Malaysia’s Time dotcom has pledged $45 million and Thailand's CAT increased its initial investment commitment of $10 million to $51 million.
Meanwhile, investment information from VNPT, Viettel and CMC TI was not yet available.
Though Facebook declined to reveal how much money the firm was committing to the scheme, market experts said the US giant would be the largest investor.
As such, the social-networking giant appears to be stealing a page from Google and moving beyond its purely web-based origins. In 2008, Google was one of the consortiums involved in the United States-Japan Trans-Pacific Unity submarine cable system, as well as the Southeast Asia-Japan Cable in 2009.
RELATED
nationthailand