By Graham K. Rogers

News out of Singapore this morning (12 August) in a SingTel press release, tells us that SingTel has joined a consortium of 6 companies to build a new trans-Pacific cable, called FASTER, that is needed because of greater demands for broadband, mobile, applications, content and enterprise data exchange on the trans-Pacific route.

The cable will link Chikura and Shima in Japan with the the USA, joining the major west coast centers of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

The agreement is said to benefit all users of the internet as the need for capacity grows and the Vice President, Carrier Services of SingTel Group Enterprise, Mr Ooi Seng Keat, is quoted as saying,

SingTel is pleased to be part of a consortium which is constructing one of the highest capacity cable systems to be built. FASTER can transmit an equivalent of 12,000 high- definition movies every second across the Pacific Ocean. It will facilitate the delivery of broadband-heavy applications, video and contents to meet the future needs of consumers and enterprises. This cutting-edge cable system will enable SingTel to provide our customers with greater network diversity and resilience, and reinforce our position as the leading provider of international data services in the region.

With NEC as system supplier, an agreement to develop this new link was signed between China Mobile International, China Telecom Global, Global Transit, Google, KDDI and SingTel. There is a planned design capacity of 60 Terabits per second initially, made up of 6 fibre pairs each carrying 100 Gigabits per second and supporting 100 wavelengths: the equivalent of 60,000 Gigabits per second (6 TB).

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.