MTNL, BSNL to join hands to link S East Asia and West Asia

New Delhi, Sep 5 (UNI) Communication and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran today said that the country's two telecom players MTNL and BSNL have joined hands to lay high speed submarine cable system connecting India to South-East Asia and West Asia and finally to US and Europe that would eventually speed up international long distance communications apart from bringing down the tariffs.

Mr Maran also urged the telecom companies to reduce the landing costs for the calls in the West Asian region which has a sizeable Indian population.

''The present submarine cable system is not very encouraging from Indian point of view, as there are only four Indian bandwidth providers namely VSNL, Bharti, BSNL and Reliance, while there are 33 in London, 32 in the US, 32 in Germany, 24 in France and 14 in South Korea,'' Mr Maran said while formally inaugurating the Falcon Submarine cable system (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anil Ambani owned Reliance Communications Ltd).

Further, bandwidth usage in India is less than one-tenth of the US, which uses more than 100 gbps per head. ''Therefore, the capacity demand of international bandwidth will out-perform the capacity available in India.'' The 2.56 terabit Falcon submarine cable system for high speed communications will connect 11 countries with India on its entire length of 11,859 Km route from Mumbai to Egypt.

The cable communication system is part of the Anil Ambani owned FLAG telecom's global network, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Reliance Communications Ltd.

It is the world's largest private submarine cable system spanning four continents and connecting over 35 countries.

The move will cater to the rapidly growing communications recquirements of India with the rest of the world, by providing cost-effective and reliable international connectivity solutions to Indian enterprises and consusumers, Reliance ADAG Chairman Anil Ambani said.

''We live in a small world and the new initiative will make it even more smaller enhancing free flow of ideas and information,'' he added.

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