VSNL, Bharti await nod to light up marine cable

Construction of submarine cable SEA-ME-WE-4 (SMW-4), which will propel India into the league of bandwidth-surplus countries, has been completed, and the cable is ready to be commissioned.

Videsh Sanchar Nigam (VSNL) and Bharti Tele-Ventures, Indian partners of the international consortium building the submarine cable, are now awaiting security clearance from the government.

"The cable is ready to be commissioned and we are waiting for clearance from Indian security agencies, which would take a couple of weeks. The cable will then be lighted up," a VSNL source said today.

The cable needs to obtain security clearance from eight agencies in the country, including the Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Bureau of Investigation and Criminal Investigation Departments and police departments of various states.

The agencies will study the cable infrastructure before certifying that data and voice over the network could be monitored in case of a security threat to the nation.

SMW-4 is being built by a consortium of over 15 global telecom majors, with each investing around $40 million. The consortium is headed by France Telecom, with an estimated total cost of $500-600 million, while Algerie Telecom, Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, Communications Authority of Thailand, ETISALAT (UAE), France Telecom, MCI (USA), Pakistan Telecommunications Company and Singapore Telecom are the other companies involved in the project.

On lighting up, the cable will provide 280 STM-1s (one STM-1 =155 MBPS connectivity) to the country, in addition to the currently available 495 GBPS. The present capacity includes 320 GBPS on Tata Indicom Chennai-Singapore cable, 160 GBPS on i2i cable and 15 GBPS on all other cables, including 10 GBPS on FLAG network.

SMW-4 can carry up to 20 million voice calls or broadcast 60,000 TV channels at the same time.

Based on dense wave division multiplexing technology, it can transport 64 wavelengths at 10 GBPS, provide full-circuit routing and will support telephone, internet, multimedia and broadband data applications.

The cable links 14 countries such as UAE, Egypt, Algeria, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India among others on its route from Europe to Asia.