Bharti Airtel Signs Contract for South-East Asia Japan Cable System (SJC)

New Delhi, India, 10 December, 2009 : Bharti Airtel today signed a landmark agreement with several other operators to build and operate the South-East Asia Japan Cable system (SJC), a new international submarine cable system with the highest capacity in the world.

The SJC cable system will address broadband demand by providing much needed capacity and faster, more reliable connectivity to sustain the unprecedented growth in data, web applications and Internet traffic throughout Asia.

The SJC system, estimated to cost US$400 million and measure 8300 km, will initially link Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, and Japan. The 6-fiber-pair high capacity submarine cable system has a design capacity of 17 Terabits per second (Tbps) upgradeable to 23 Tbps, the highest capacity system ever built so far.

Speaking on the occasion David Nishball, President- Enterprise Services, Bharti Airtel said,”The launch of the Southeast Asia Japan Cable System will significantly enhance the region's telecom infrastructure by delivering better and diverse connectivity. The SJC cable system will provide large capacities to our customers to meet all their global connectivity needs and exceed their service level expectations. The SJC cable link also synergises with our existing high speed connectivity from India to Singapore on i2i and from Japan to US on Unity creating a high speed terabit highyway for us between India and the United states, The SJC cable system is an important milestone in the telecommunications infrastructure and Bharti Airtel is proud to be part of the global consortium to build the same.” 

Initiating parties to this breakthrough project include players like Bharti Airtel, Globe Telecom (Philippines), Google (USA), KDDI (Japan) and Telemedia Pacific Inc. (Hong Kong/Indonesia). Other initial parties have signified their intent to participate in the project once requisite approvals have been obtained 

The initiating parties signed the agreements in Manila on December 10, 2009. The SJC is targeted to be operational by the second quarter of 2012.

Source: Bharti Airtel