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Dubai: Thousands of miles of optical-fibre submarine cable, with a size smaller than a pen and a maximum capacity that can handle 4.5 million phone calls at the same time, will be laid on the ocean bed connecting the UAE to 12 other countries by 2010, du announced yesterday.
The integrated telecom operator in the UAE is investing $50 million to build a $700 million cable system that will span from the United Kingdom to India.
The project, called the Europe India Gateway (EIG) cable system, is expected to bring in considerable diversity and bandwidth into the Middle East, provide global access to operators in the region and enhance the capacity between the countries covered in the network.
"This cable system, at 3.84 terabits, if I translate that to perhaps the number of phone calls it can handle, we could basically have the whole population of the UAE talking on the phone at the same time," said Andrew Grenville, du executive vice president for international and wholesale.
du chief executive officer Osman Sultan, however, clarified that the 4.5 million phone users is just an analogy to demonstrate the cable system's full capacity. "Don't translate that to any business anticipation."
"This is increasing our ability to carry traffic, to offer services to our customers here and to other operators," Sultan told reporters at a media roundtable discussion.
Once the project is operational by the second quarter of 2010, it will allow du's customers in the UAE to connect to other countries with better capacity and diversity. The submarine cable can transmit voice and broadband traffic, video and other data.
"We have lots of our own customers across -mobile customers, broadband customers- and their number is growing very fast all the time. We want to make sure that their experience is good," explained Grenville.
The project is a consortium of global operators and includes laying 9,000 miles (15,000 kilometres) of high-bandwidth optical-fibre cable spanning 13 countries and three continents. Landings are planned in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Gibraltar, Morocco, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, UAE and India.
The cable will be accessed through a new landing station in Fujairah and will offer an additional cable landing station into the UAE, adding diversity to the existing facilities from telecom operators in the country.
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