14 DAY TRIAL // Flag Telecom recently announced a deal with Fujitsu for the construction of a submarine network of cables which should link countries across the Mediterranean, East Africa, Asia and the Pacific region. The international bandwidth provider Flag Telecom is a company owned by the Indian group Reliance Communications, which confirmed the deal and said that the total value of the contract is $1.5 billion.
The new network of submarine cable will almost double the length of Flag Telecom's global from 65,000 kilometers to 115,000 km and the whole thing is supposed to be complete by March 2010 when it will begin its use as a new Internet Protocol, IP for short, network. As the Indian owned company now has more than 200 international customers, the new cable network will help reduce bottlenecks and allow current clients like telecommunications service providers, content providers and ISPs (Internet service providers) expand their own base of offerings.
The parent company, Reliance plans to expand its reach to the United States by buying Yipes, a U.S. provider of Ethernet managed services and then use the new submarine network of cables belonging to Flag Telecom in order to expand Yipes' services worldwide. The next generation of submarine cables for Flag Telecom consists of four systems that will connect different zones. System 1 will link India to Hong Kong and may or may not pass near Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Cambodia in order to allow these countries to connect themselves to the system. The second system will go from India to Kenya with potential areas of expansion in South Africa and Reunion while zones like Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, Mayotte and Mauritius may have to wait a little longer.
The third system will link Egypt and France and it may be later expanded to Syria, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Malta, Libya, Tunisia and Italy, while the fourth and final system will run between Japan and the United States across the Pacific. The contract awarded to Fujitsu is including the cable build, installation, deployment and testing of the first and third systems, while a deal for the second and the forth systems is being negotiated now.