TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd (TM) has won a landmark contract to build a submarine cable system spanning 3,500km.
The Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1Malaysia (SKR1M) contract, secured from an open tender by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), will have an initial capacity of four terabit per second.
It is to enhance the existing domestic submarine cable connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak.
SKR1M is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by mid-2017, said TM chief executive officer Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa in a statement yesterday.
The project will be established through a public-private partnership between MCMC and TM, utilising the Universal Services Provision Fund under the purview of the commission.
SKR1M’s huge bandwidth would improve user experience by minimising potential traffic congestion between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, said Zamzamzairani.
This would also allow further growth in bandwidth and Internet-based applications to flow smoothly between these areas, he added.
TM is well experienced in the domestic, regional and global submarine cable development and investments. It owns more than 10 submarine cable systems which span more than 100,000 fiber route miles around the globe.
SKR1M is part of the government’s initiative to increase the capacity of high-speed broadband, as outlined in the 2014 and 2015 Budgets.