A Japanese-French consortium will start building a high-speed underwater telecommunications cable connecting Singapore with Marseille via 12 other cities, telecom executives said here on Saturday.
The SMW4 (Southeast Asia, Middle East and Western Europe) submarine cable network, which is fourth of its kind since 1982, will be about 20,000 kilometre's (12,400 miles) long, including the main trunk line and branches, and will cost about 500 million dollars to build.
France's Alcatel Submarine Networks and Japan's Fujitsu Ltd have been chosen as lead contractors on the project, which is being financed by 16 different telecom companies.
Sponsors include Algeria Telecom, Bangladesh Telecom, CAT Telecom of Thailand, Etisalat of the UAE, France Telecom, US telecoms firm MCI, Pakistan Telecom, Saudi Telecom, Singapore Telecom, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia, Tunisia Telecom and India's VSNL.
"The project will provide unprecedented high-speed telecom links between 14 countries," said UAE Telecoms Minister Ahmed Humaid al-Tayer at a signing ceremony in Dubai.
"It will also contribute to breaking the digital divide between developed and developing countries."
The cable is expected to become operational in the third quarter of 2005 and will be able to handle 20 million voice calls or 60,000 broadcast television channels at the same time, according to a presentation by Etisalat.
The SMW4 cable will connect to existing telecom networks in Europe, according to a France Telecom executive attending the signing.
The French operator has participated in all three previous underwater cable projects.
SMW3, the largest one, was completed in 1999 at an estimated cost of 1.5 billion dollars and involves a 39,000-kilometer (24,000-mile) cable network running from China to Germany and serving Japan, Australia, south-east Asia and the Middle East.
Industry players are hoping the start of work on the latest underwater cable will revive the market's appetite for similar projects following the lull in big telecom investments over the past three years due to the global slump in the industry.
"There were many projects planned but could not be realised due to shortage of investment," Yukio Mizuochi, group vice president at Fujitsu told AFP.
"We hope this project will lead the market recovery ... and meet increased demand coming from broadband and Internet."
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