StarHub joins consortium to develop the Asia-Pacific Gateway submarine cable system that will link the Asia-Pacific region

Singapore , 15 June 2009 - StarHub today announced that it has joined a consortium comprising major Asian telecommunications companies that have agreed to jointly plan and develop a proposal to build an international submarine cable system in the Asia Pacific region.  

The cable system, known as the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG), will span 8,000 kilometres across the region linking nine countries, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan and Korea.

The APG will use the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technology with a minimum design capacity of 4 terabits per second of data bandwidth that will provide additional bandwidth capacity to the carriers.

Explaining how the involvement in the APG would benefit StarHub, Mr Tan Tong Hai, StarHub's Chief Operating Officer, said: “In anticipation of the expected exponential growth in bandwidth demand, especially with Singapore's Next-Gen National Broadband Network in place within the next few years, the additional capacity provided by the APG will further expand and enhance StarHub's international connectivity offering, enabling us to better serve the country’s broadband needs in corporate data services and wholesale bandwidth, well into the future."

Besides the additional bandwidth capacity, the APG will also provide seamless connectivity to key north Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan which are important trading partners of Singapore.

In addition, the APG will enhance StarHub’s international connectivity by providing diversity to existing submarine cable systems such as APCN2 and AAG. In the event of cable damage resulting from an accident or a natural disaster, the APG will minimise the impact of service disruption in international links provided by these cable systems.

Aside from StarHub (Singapore), other carriers in the APG consortium include Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), China Telecom (Mainland China), China Unicom (Mainland China), KT Corporation (Korea), NTT Communications (Japan), PLDT (the Philippines), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam).