BBG Consortium Inks Agreements

International carriers including Telekom Malaysia, Vodafone Group, Omantel, Etisalat, Reliance Jio Infocomm and Dialog Axiata formed a consortium for the construction of the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG) submarine cable system. The BBG Consortium signed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA) and the Supply Contract for BBG in Kuala Lumpur on April 30, 2013.

Inking the agreement were Rozaimy Rahman, Executive Vice President, Global & Wholesale, TM; Rick Perry, Head of International Development, Vodafone Group Technology, Vodafone; Ali Amiri, Executive Vice President, Carrier and Wholesale, Etisalat; Sohail Qadir, Vice President, Omantel; Mathew Oommen, President, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited; and Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Group Chief Executive Officer of Dialog Axiata Sri Lanka.

The BBG submarine cable system, spanning approximately 8,000 km, will link Malaysia (through Penang) and Singapore to the Middle East (Oman and United Arab Emirates) with connections reaching out to India (Mumbai and Chennai) and Sri Lanka.

The construction of BBG submarine cable system is planned 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 Asia.

The BBG submarine cable system will also serve as an extraordinary opportunity for business growth as it will help supporting current and future high capacity requirements from the surrounding areas of the region as well as next generation Internet applications.

The construction of this cable system is a clear indication of the growing demand for bandwidth at the participating countries. The markets are expected to see strong growth with the continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion.

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