Telekom Malaysia (TM) has won a contract from the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to build a new submarine cable system to cater future bandwidth growth demands in the country.
The new subsea cable, called Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1Malaysia (SKR1M), will span 3,500km and link Peninsular Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak, TM said in a statement released last week.
The SKR1M cable system will have an initial capacity of 4Tbps and is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by mid-2017.
The anticipated bandwidth will improve the user experience by minimizing potential traffic congestion between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak, TM added.
TM, which invests and owns more than 10 submarine cable systems spanning more than 100,000 fiber-route miles around the globe, didn’t disclose the financial details of the project.
The operator said the initiative is a public-private partnership arrangement between MCMC and TM utilizing the Universal Services Provision Fund.