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Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) and 12 other international telecommunications carriers signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Bali, Indonesia, to work jointly on the construction of a new submarine cable linking South East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. SLT CEO Shuhei Anan signed the MoU on behalf of Sri Lanka Telecom, which is the only signatory from Sri Lanka of this consortium of international telecommunications network operators.

The optical fibre cable will connect 12 countries: Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy and France.

Some of the partners of the project include PT Indosat, Singapore Telecommunications Limited, Telekom Malaysia Berhad, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, Bharti Telesonic, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited, Emirates Telecommunications Corporation, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Telecom Italia S.p.A and France Telecom.

The project is in its planning stage and it is proposed to be built using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiflexing) with a capacity of 1.28 Terabits per second. The network will provide much needed bandwidth as the existing cables along the same route become saturated.

At present data traffic from South East Asia and the Middle East to Europe is routed via smaller capacity cables, mainly SEA-ME-WE 3 and FLAG.SLT is already a signatory of SEA-ME-WE 3 consortium. The cable project is expected to be ready for service in 2004. Anan said, "Once the project is completed Sri Lanka will be poised to provide the most required infrastructure to become the information communication technology hub of South Asia.

This gigantic optical fibre cable will make substantial value addition to this strategically located island nation."

"The country as a whole will benefit from this cable route which connects South East Asia and Western Europe. We in Sri Lanka will be experiencing the discovery of telecommunications silk route," he said.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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