Fujitsu wins high-speed telecoms cable contract

Fujitsu wins high-speed telecoms cable contract

TOKYO (AFP): Japan's biggest computer company Fujitsu Ltd. said Wednesday it had won a contract to build a US$645-million high-speed telecommunications cable linking Singapore, Jakarta and Sydney.

New Zealand-based Nava Networks had contracted Fujitsu to build the 9,000-kilometer (5,625-mile) undersea fiber-optic cable by July 2002, the Japanese firm said in a statement.

"The Nava-1 network will provide a high capacity strategic data connection between Singapore, Indonesia and Australia," the statement said.

"It will also connect to international cables, effectively closing the southern hemisphere loop for international systems between Europe, North America and Asia."

The cable will have transmission capacity of 2.56 terabits (2,560 gigabits) per second, equivalent to 40 million telephone lines "or transmission of over 64 full-length feature films of DVD quality video per second."

"There is a strong demand for bandwidth in Southeast Asian and Australian telecommunications markets, and the demand is expected to grow considerably in the next few years," said Nava Networks sales director Brett O'Riley.

The network would be crucial to telecoms firms, Internet service providers, e-commerce and web broadcasters, he said.

A spokesman declined to confirm how much Fujitsu would earn from the project, which has a total budget of 645 million dollars.

Fujitsu rival NEC Corp. has won contracts to build the control systems for two other Asia-Pacific telecoms cables currently under construction, which will earn it more than 1.1 billion dollars.

The bigger of the two, a 14,000-kilometer (8,750-mile) East Asian system connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, will also have capacity of 2.56 terabits per second.