Telekom Malaysia Berhad has sealed a Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) with PT XL Axiata Tbk and PT Mora Telematika of Indonesia to jointly build a high bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system between Malaysia and Indonesia named the “Batam-Dumai-Melaka” Cable System (BDM).
Press release below.
11 February- Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) today sealed a Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) with PT XL Axiata Tbk and PT Mora Telematika of Indonesia to jointly build a high bandwidth optical fiber submarine cable system between Malaysia and Indonesia named the “Batam-Dumai-Melaka” Cable System (BDM).
The agreement on the construction of the new cable system was signed by Rozaimy Abdul Rahman, Executive Vice President, TM Global representing TM while the Indonesian telcos were represented by Habib Mustain, Vice President, Commerce Netco of XL Axiata and Robertus Suratno, Director of Engineering, Mora Telematika.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Rozaimy Abdul Rahman said, “Today, PT XL Axiata Tbk, PT Mora Telematika and TM are coming together to build a submarine cable system from Malaysia direct to Indonesia. The tremendous growth of data is synchronous with an increasingly dynamic and high growth business environment in Malaysia and Indonesia, tied to the exponential rise in Internet usage. The design of BDM has taken into consideration current and future high capacity requirements for next generation Internet applications.”
“The beneficiaries of the BDM are not only confined to the consortiums members, but will also benefit countries and regions that connect to others directly serviced by the BDM. As such, excellent interconnections will also be provided to other existing submarine cable systems covering Asia Pacific, Europe, USA and even the Africa seeing that many more international carriers are aiming to collaborate to build new cables with Indonesia. Moreover, the BDM not only offers additional international bandwidth capacity to countries in the region, it will also serve as a gateway to major Asian centers as more and more international organizations move their operations toward this region to leverage on the lower cost of operations here,” Rozaimy further added.
The BDM cable system consists of 2 fiber pairs, designed to provide 1.28 Tbps adopting Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology to provide upgradable, future-proof transmission facilities. The BDM will connect approximately 400 km distance between the two countries with two routes, Melaka-Batam and Melaka-Dumai. The landing station in Malaysia will be provided by TM while the Indonesian landing stations will be established by PT XL Axiata TBK.
The BDM cable system is expected to carry commercial traffic by Q4 2011.
“For the three consortium partners, taking this initiative is part of our continued commitment to invest in the development of IP communications regionally and to extend broadband access to a wider audience. Furthermore, the additional capacity will help to reduce any future potential congestion we may face due to the increased capacity requirements in the region. TM is indeed honored to take the lead in this endeavor and it definitely puts us in good stead moving forward. Ultimately, the BDM project augurs well for all of us, as we look towards an era of greater cooperation and stronger alliance amongst us. I believe there will be many other new opportunities that will arise from this alliance formed today,” Rozaimy concluded.
TM owns or leases capacity on more than 10 submarine cable systems, which span more than 60,000 fiber-route miles around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the company uses to carry traffic between Asia-Pacific region and North American region.
Besides BDM, TM is also a member of the various consortiums for submarine cable systems in the region, which include Asia America Gateway (AAG) submarine cable network, South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe Cable System 3 (SEA-ME-WE3 – SMW3), SEA-ME-WE4 (SMW4), Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) and the latest, TM’s wholly-owned CAHAYA MALAYSIA that will link Malaysia to Hong Kong, and Japan.
For more information on TM, visit www.tm.com.my.
