BBG Cable Goes Live

The Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) Consortium announced on 18^th April 2016 that the 8,100 km submarine cable system, the first dark fibre system to be lit at 100G, is now operational and ready to handle the high bandwidth demands of new and emerging technologies and applications.

Linking Malaysia and Singapore to Oman and the UAE, with branches to India and Sri Lanka the cable provides ample diversity to South East Asia- India - Middle East - Europe routes. This cable can be suitably used in addition to existing cable systems like SMW4/ IMEWE/ EIG/ i2i.

BBG can be used to interconnect with existing land and undersea cables at Oman and UAE for Europe, Middle East and Africa and similarly at Malaysia and Singapore for Far East Asia all the way to the US.

BBG uses the most advanced high-speed broadband fibre optic technology; dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) which allows the capacity to be increased at will without any additional submarine intervention. The initial equipped capacity of the system is a mammoth 9Tb/s and a staggering design capacity of 55Tb/s.

BBG is a unique cable that moves away from the traditional MIU KM model and adopts the more innovative and cost effective digital line section (“DLS”) based model. This implies that the capacity is better utilized as there is no need to reserve a portion of the total capacity for congestion. It also allows each member of the Consortium to carry out an upgrade when required and where required.

Another first to the submarine cables world is that BBG provides pre-agreed highly attractive cable station interconnect rates making the cable highly predictable and viable economically. The cable promises enhanced reliability as the marine route design is such that it avoids the busy and crowded Malacca Straits and other cable cut prone areas with diverse terrestrial connection directly to two Singapore PoPs.

The cable is owned by a group of high profile tier 1 global telecom operators such as Dialog Axiata of Sri Lanka, Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates, Omantel of Sultanate of Oman, Reliance Jio Infocomm of India, Telekom Malaysia Berhad of Malaysia and Vodafone of United Kingdom.

Source: BBG Consortium