Telekom Malaysia has announced that a new submarine cable system, the Bay of Bengal Gateway (BBG), is now live. The BBG cable system links Malaysia and Singapore, to Oman and the UAE by way of India and Sri Lanka. The BBG cable system complements TM’s other cable systems and provides an essential alternative route for TM’s IP traffic to Europe.

BBG is an essential part of TM’s network as it will be able to minimize downtime or slow-downs that may surface from TM’s Pacific Ocean gateways as these run through earthquake prone zones. The BBG cable system started carrying commercial traffic on the 30th of March, 2016.

BBG submarine cable system has been designed to provide connections by either using its 10 Gbit/s or 100 Gbit/s interface. This three fiber pair cable is based on 100G DWDM coherent technology in which its design has an overall capacity of 10 Tbit/s per fiber pair.

BBG Cable Map

The BBG cable system spans 8,100 km, linking Middle East (Fujairah in the UAE, Barka in Oman), Mumbai and Chennai in India, Mount Lavinia in Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. This cable system comes ashore in Penang and continues southwards, via TM’s comprehensive protected terrestrial network, to Points-of-Presence at Equinix and Global Switch in Singapore. This unique approach allows TM to avoid the busy Straits of Malacca waterways and other cable cut prone areas, thus enhancing the reliability of the cable system.

The BBG submarine cable system, however, is not TM’s first or only. In total, TM owns or leases capacity in 20 of these (including those under construction), spanning more than 200,000 fiber-route miles around the world. Other systems that TM is involved with in the region include AAG, SEA-ME-WE3 (SMW3), SEA-ME-WE4 (SMW4), APCN-2, Batam-Rengit Cable System (BRIGHT), Batam-Dumai-Melaka Cable System (BDM), Dumai-Melaka Cable System (DMCS) and Cahaya Malaysia (CM). Those still under construction include Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT), SEA-ME-WE5 (SMW5), and Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1Malaysia (SKR1M). TM also makes further investments in other cable systems such as the Japan-US Cable Network (JUSCN), China-US Cable Network (CUSCN), and South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC/SAFE).

Made up of 6 high profile tier 1 global telecommunications operators, the BBG Consortium, led by Malaysia’s TM and Vodafone Group of UK, was formed back in 2013 with the participation of Omantel, Etisalat, Reliance Jio Infocomm, and Dialog Axiata.

BBG Consortium