TGN-IA Upgrade Runs Ahead of Schedule

Hong Kong, August 20, 2009 - After a surge in demand brought out by the Typhoon Morakot, Tata Communications is planning to upgrade the capacity of the TGN-Intra Asia submarine cable system (TGN-IA) this year rather than next year as originally planned.

The Typhoon Morakot and seismic activity caused some cables to go down around Taiwan this month. While the TGN-IA undersea cable was unaffected, because the TGN-IA cable route was deliberately designed to avoid areas prone to earthquakes and other hazardous areas.

Tata Communications and PPCW Global accelerated by a few days the commissioning of TGN-IA's branch to Hong Kong after a surge in demand when other cable systems went down after the undersea landslides caused 
by the Typhoon Morakot. Tata Communications officially announced the completion of TGN-IA construction on August 18, 2009 and the whole TGN-IA cable system was put into service immediately.

The current capacity of the cable is 650 Gbps (Giga bits per second), which is shared across Tata Communications and its partners, PCCW Global, Globe Telecom and EVNTelecom. Tata Communications has 230 Gbps of this capacity for its own network use.

Using cable capacity from India to Singapore, and cables in the Pacific Ocean from the company's July 2005 acquisition of Tyco Global Network, Tata Communications can now link customers from India through to North America.

Tata Communications has partnered with Globe Telecom to expand the TGN-IA cable system into the Philippines and with EVN Telecom to expand the TGN-IA to Vietnam. While the Philippines branch is already in operation, the Vietnam branch is likely to go online by the end of this year.

Customers are interested in the TGN-IA cable since it sits away from the earthquake zone around Taiwan. The low latency of the TGN-IA cable -- about 63 milliseconds between Singapore and Japan -- is also attractive to customers.

By October, Tata Communications is planning to bring online a cable system that connects its landing station in Guam to Australia, the PIPE Pacific 1 (PPC-1) cable system. The cable system will also be connected to TGN-IA and will serve Australian enterprise customers.