Telekom Malaysia (TM) is expanding its capacity into Africa and the Middle East to cope with growth in the telecom world\'s latest boom markets.
It has just added new nodes in Bahrain and Egypt and is looking at further PoPs, possibly in Oman and Saudi Arabia.
TM Global executive vice president Rozalmy Rahman said the expansion was to support growing demand from business customers and wholesale partners, "who really need to be there."
Speaking at the signing of an interconnect agreement with Telstra yesterday, Rahman said TM was the only Asian shareholder in the SAFE (South Africa Far East) cable system, which connects Europe to Malaysia via Africa\'s west and southern coasts.
The network-to-network interconnect (NNI) arrangement would enable customers of both Telstra and TM to connect directly into each others\' networks, according to Telstra International\'s senior vice president in Asia, Greg Russell.
He said that while Africa was not a major growth spot for the Australian carrier, the NNI with TM ensured that it could meet customer requirements as they arose.
The NNI would help Telstra to deliver cost-effective and reliable network services for corporate customers, Russell said.
He said the TM agreement was one of a series of partnerships that Telstra had signed in order to extend its coverage.
A number of these had been with TM, including the AAG trans-Pacific cable system, due to go into service in August. TM was the original shareholder and Telstra was the largest shareholder, Russell said.
Separately, TM yesterday also launched its new Singapore IP transit node, established with Verizon.