Omantel, the pioneer provider of total communications solutions in the Sultanate of Oman, on Saturday announced that it inked an agreement for another submarine cable, the "Bay of Bengal Gateway" submarine cable system (BBG). This new submarine cable will enhance the robustness and reli- ability of international connectiv- ity between Oman and the rest of the world through another direct connection to Singapore, with additional landing points in the UAE, India, Sri Lanka and Malaysia. The BBG collaboration was made official when the consorti- um members -- Omantel (Oman), Telekom Malaysia Berhad (Malaysia), Vodafone Group (UK), Etisalat (UAE), Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (India) and Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka) -- signed the consortium agreement in Kuala Lumpur earlier. The construction of this cable system is a clear indication of the growing demand for bandwidth in the participating countries. These markets are expected to see strong growth with the continuous efforts in embracing the broadband technologies and infrastructure expansion. The BBG cable system will span approximately 8,000-km and connect six countries via landing points in Barka (Oman), Fujairah (United Arab Emirates), Mumbai and Chennai (India), Rathmalana (Sri Lanka), and Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore. Commercial operation of BBG is planned to start by end of fourth quarter of 2014. It will offer an ultimate design capacity of 28 terabit per second and is designed to provide upgradable transmission facilities by adopting the state-of-the-art 100 gigabit per second technology, under-pinning the continued growth of new applications and services in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and the Far East. The construction of BBG 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 throughinterconnections with other existing and newly built cable systems landing in India, the Middle East and the Far East Asia. BBG will also serve as an 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. Dr Amer Al Rawas, Omantel chief executive officer, said: "BBG will complement our existing submarine cable network by providing diversity and additional capacity to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore. Together with our EPEG cable from Oman (terrestrial route over Iran and Russia to Frankfurt), Omantel will be able to offer redundant routed capacity with superior quality and the lowest latency between Singapore and Frankfurt. This is a unique value proposition to our international customers." Times of Oman
