Pacnet has announced plans to construct a $150 million (€101m) cable system linking India with southeast Asia, with the eventual goal of offering pan-Indian telecom services.
The West Asia Crossing (WAC) cable will connect Chennai, India with Singapore and Malaysia, and should be ready for service by early 2012, Pacnet said.
It will have an initial design capacity of 6-8 Tbps, and be capable of a future extension into Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, or adding more links into India. It will interconnect with Pacnet's existing EAC-C2C cable system to India.
Pacnet CEO Bill Barney said the company would construct the WAC based on the approach taken for the Unity cable system, which landed in Japan last month.
Each partner in the Unity venture is able to operate independently, but is still benefiting from economies of scale, Barney said.
“[But] while we are already in talks with potential partners for WAC, we are also considering fully funding the entire project,” he added.
Pacnet is already in talks with subsea cable suppliers, and should award a contract in early 2010.
The company has meanwhile applied to Indian regulators for both NLD and ILD licenses, and has been told their application has been successful. Pacnet has since begun planning for a new PoP in Chennai to serve as an international gateway.
Construction should be complete by Q3 2010, by which time the operator will launch Ethernet international private line, IP VPN and other managed services in India.