Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., a telecom service provider in Taiwan announced recently that it will participate in building the Asia Pacific Gateway (News - Alert) (APG), an undersea cable in East Asia.

 

Proposed to be ready by 2011, the cable system will span about 8,000 kilometers and will use the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing technologies with a minimum design capacity of 4 Terabit per second. It is expected to upgrade the bandwidth of Taiwan to major Asian countries.

 

With Chunghwa making this announcement, Nine Asia-Pacific telecoms companies have announced the formation of a new consortium for the construction of the regional undersea cable system. As stated, the construction will commence in 2010. Other participants of the project include NTT Com (of Japan), China Telecom (China), China Unicom (China), KT (News - Alert) Corp (South Korea), PLDT (Philippines), TOT (Thailand), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam).

 

Upon the completion, the undersea cable is stated to connect ten countries and territories with a minimum bandwidth of 4Tbps, including Taiwan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

 

Chunghwa Telecom (News - Alert) says that the economic growth of Asia Pacific countries has boosted market demand for high bandwidth. Internet services require high reliability to ensure continuous communications and avoid possible damage to cables due to accidents such as earthquake.

 

Chunghwa Telecom provides fixed-line, mobile and Internet and data services to residential and business customers in Taiwan.