Orient Link (OLL) and NEC Corporation have signed an agreement to build a MIST submarine cable system to directly connect Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and India.
The system will span 8,100 kilometers and will deliver more than 216 terabits per second.
“Globally, India and Southeast Asia are among the world’s fastest-growing economies,” said Yoshio Sato, the CEO of OLL.
The Asia region has experienced accelerated digital investment driven by data center growth, mobile penetration, 5G expansion and the rise of cloud services.
“I am very pleased to announce the launch of MIST, providing a truly connected India to our clients around the world, delivering high-quality, low-latency networks to the people in India as the nation charges forward with its digital transformation roadmap,” added Mr. Sato.
Data consumption by half a billion digital users is reaching unprecedented levels and cloud adoption is surging in India, contributing to an increasing amount of data traffic across submarine cables and demand for interconnected data centers.
“Not only will MIST respond to the growing demands for data center interconnectivity across countries in the Southeast Asia region, but it ultimately allows for OLL to grow its offering and expand into India and beyond,”
OLL, a strategic joint venture company led by NTT Group, hopes the new system will further enhance and contribute to communications network expansions from Asia to improve network redundancy, ensure highly reliable communications and expand onward connectivity options in the Bay of Bengal.
NEC, a Japan-based multinational IT and electronics company with extensive experience in implementing submarine cable systems, was selected by OLL as their supply partner.
“We are honored to be selected as the supplier for MIST together with our local affiliate in India,” said Atsushi Kuwahara, the General Manager of NEC’s Submarine Network Division.
Together with their India affiliate, NEC Technologies India Private Ltd, Mr. Kuwahara hopes to fully capitalise on their regional expertise in Southeast Asia and India to ensure the successful completion of the submarine cable in the third quarter of 2022.
Back in June, Asia Direct Cable (ADC) and NEC announced the construction of another high-performance submarine cable that would connect China (Hong Kong and Guangdong province), Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam by the fourth quarter of 2022.
ADC is a global consortium of leading communications and technology companies, including CAT, China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT Inc., Singtel, SoftBank Corp., Tata Communications and Viettel.
