NEC finishes submarine cable construction in Malaysia

Peninsular Malaysia has another connection to Sabah and Sararwak after NEC officially completed its submarine cable this week.

The Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1Malaysia (SKR1M) will bring 100 gigabit-per-second speeds to Peninsular Malaysia and neighbouring Sabar and Sarawak.

The cable aims to address future bandwidth growth requirements and enhance current domestic submarine connectivity between the regions.

The new cable spans more than 3800 and has six landing points: Kuantan, Mersing, Kuching, Bintulu, Miri and Kota Kinabalu.

"This new submarine cable system is part of the Government's initiatives via MCMC to increase the capacity of high-speed broadband and data traffic between Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak," comments Minister of Communications and Multimedia Malaysia, Datuk Seri Panglima Dr Mohd Salleh Tun Said Keruak.

"This is among the measures which the Government is undertaking to improve the socio-economic status of people in Sabah and Sarawak through ICT adoption and broadband connectivity and was mentioned by our honorable Prime Minister during the tabling of the 2014 budget. Thus, I am delighted that today, this goal has become a reality.

The SKR1M project is the result of a partnership between Telekom Malaysia Berhad and the Malaysian Government through the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.

TIME dotcom Berhard subsidiary TT dotcom also funded and owns some of the submarine cable.

"NEC has been active in the submarine cable system business for more than 40 years, and in 1980, NEC supplied Malaysia with its first domestic coaxial submarine cable system," comments NEC Corporation executive vice president Atsuo Kawamura,

"NEC has laid a total of more than 250,000 kilometers of cable—the equivalent of six trips around the earth's equator, and we are now recognized as one of the world's top submarine cable vendors. On this occasion, I would like to extend my congratulations to MCMC and TM, and my heart-felt thanks for yet again selecting NEC as your partner to build SKR1M. I sincerely hope that our partnership will be further enhanced, and be given the next opportunity to contribute to the various regions of Malaysia," Kawamura concludes.