VSNL to commence Chennai-Singapore submarine cable work

Chennai:
17 May 2004

Chennai: Work on the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited's (VSNL) 3,175 km undersea cable laying project between Chennai-Singapore has commenced. The $100 million project christened Tata Indicom India Singapore System will soon be commissioned during the fourth quarter of this year.

While the initial bandwidth increase will be 320 giga bits per second (gbps), the cable has a total capacity of 5.12 terra bits per second (tbps).

According to Rob Munier, managing director, Tyco Telecommunications (a unit of Tyco Electronics), Global Systems Sales, the company's newly acquired undersea cable laying ship will start work in a week's time at the Chennai end. Two more similar ships — one Korean and the other Chinese — will be involved in the project.

Tyco offers VSNL a warranty period of five years for the cable systems. "That is the industry norm," says Munier. The warranty does not cover cable / repeater damage on account of earthquake and similar acts of nature.

The process of laying of telecom cable undersea starts with the initial feasibility studies including route planning and desktop studies. The route survey will reveal the seabed features and hazards, seafloor sediment layers and structure.

After the route planning and route survey works are over, cables of varying thickness are loaded on to Tyco Durable. The thickest cable will be laid from the beachhead to a point were the chances of damage by fishing vessel, etc, are absent. The cable will be buried using the sea plow. Once deep into the seabed, a thin cable will be laid on the seabed.