TGN-IA Cable Route Improves the Robustness of Submarine Networks

The TGN-Intra Asia Cable Network (TGN-IA) is a private Intra-Asia submarine cable system constructed, owned and operated by Tata Communications. The TGN-IA cable route runs deliberately to avoid areas prone to earthquakes and other hazardous areas and significantly improves the robustness of the submarine networks.

The 6800 km TGN-IA cable network consist of 4 fibre pairs linking Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Guam. There are now six cable landing stations in the TGN-IA cable network: Changi, Vung Tau, Ballesteros, Deep Water Bay, Toyohashi and Piti.

Geographically, taking consideration of the experience from the Taiwan Earthquake in Dec 2006 which caused multiple submarine cable cuts, the TGN-Intra Asia cable route was deliberately designed to avoid areas prone to earthquakes and other hazardous areas. The TGN-IA cable route goes much more southward and eastward of the Taiwan Island.

The TGN-IA cable network consists of one express fiber pair directly connecting Singapore and Tokyo, to offer excellent low latency of 63ms between Singapore and Tokyo. And there are also direct connections between the Philippines and Hong Kong as well as the Philippines and Japan, to provide alternative and sufficient capacity for the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines, where Globe Telecom is an exclusive landing party of the TGN-IA cable network.

The TGN-IA cable network can equip with 96 wavelengths over each of the 4 fibre pairs, operating with 10 Gbps DWDM technology. The system capacity of the TGN-IA cable network can reach up to 3.84 Tbps.

With the seamless interconnection of the TGN-IA with the TIC (Tata Indicom Cable) and the TGN-Pacific respectively at the Changi cable landing station and the Toyohashi cable landing station, the Submarine Networks forms an alternative and reliable route for the traffic between Asia and the US.

Running over the TIC, TGN-IA and TGN-Pacific route, the latency (round trip delay, RTD) can be achieved approximately:

• 215 ms between Chennai and Los Angeles,
• 180 ms between Singapore and Los Angeles, and
• 63 ms between Singapore and Tokyo.

While offering capacity of Tbps, the TGN-IA cable network improve the allover robustness and reliability of the submarine networks, especially in intra-Asia regions. The TGN-IA cable network survived well after the shocks of the Typhoon Morakot and earthquake in southeast of Taiwan in August 2009 and the Magnitude-9.0 Japan earthquake in March 2011, both of which caused multiple submarine cable cuts.