RIL consortium to set up S-E Asia-Middle East submarine cable

India's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has joined a consortium of global and regional telecom companies, including Telekom Malaysia Berhad and Vodafone Group, to set up a submarine cable system linking Malaysia and Singapore to the Middle East.

RIL's telecom subsidiary Reliance Jio Infocomm is the consortium partner in the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system while other players include Omantel (Oman), Etisalat (UAE) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka).

The consortium partners today signed a construction and maintenance agreement (C&MA) and supply contract for the cable in Kuala Lumpur.

The BBG submarine cable system, spanning about 8,000 km, will link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with landing stations in Mumbai and Chennai, and in Sri Lanka.

The sub-sea cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by 2014-end, Reliance Industries said in a statement.

When completed, the BBG cable system will not only to provide connectivity between South East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, but also to Europe, Africa and to the Far East Asia through interconnections with other existing and newly built cable systems landing in India, the Middle East and the Far East.

''BBG will also serve as an extraordinary opportunity for business growth as it will help support current and future high capacity requirements from the surrounding areas of the region as well as next generation internet applications,'' RIL said in its release.

RIL expects the cable system to cater to the growing demand for bandwidth at the participating countries where the markets are expected to see strong growth with continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion.

''The BBG cable system is designed to provide upgradable and transmission facilities by adopting the state-of-the-art 100Gbps technology. This cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by end of 2014,'' the release added.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJIL), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), is the only Pan-India operator with broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum across 22 circles capable of offering fourth generation (4G) wireless services.

With a portfolio of products that would include high-speed broadband connectivity, communications, entertainment, and cloud services, RJIL plans to deliver integrated digital services across the nation.