Pacnet to land new cable system into India to support growing demand for international bandwidth

Franchise communications service provider, Pacnet has recently announced that it will be making its largest investment into growing its presence in India by building West Asia Crossing (WAC). WAC is a new submarine cable network that will offer direct connectivity between India and Asia, addressing the country’s growing requirements for international bandwidth. 

Bill Barney, Chief Executive Officer of the communications provider Pacnet said "An ongoing concern for customers and service providers in India is the current cost of international bandwidth, which despite recent cost reductions in the market, still remains high by international standards. To address this and help reduce the cost of connectivity for companies and individuals in India, Pacnet plans to build WAC, a cable system that will connect our existing pan-Asian EAC-C2C cable system to India.”

"TeleGeography expects demand of international bandwidth to India to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 83 percent between 2009 and 2015. In addition to the phenomenal growth of domestic demand within India, the country is also a major hub for international submarine cables, linking Europe and the Middle East with Asia," said TeleGeography Research Director Alan Mauldin. "While four new cables will soon be installed between the West coast of India and the Middle East, Pacnet's new India-Singapore cable will be the first system deployed between the east coast of India and Singapore since 2005."

WAC will be built based on the “joint build” approach that was pioneered with the Unity cable system, where each member of the partnership benefits from the economies of the scale of the project and is able to operate independently. “While we are already in talks with potential partners for WAC, we are also considering fully funding the entire project,” said Mr Barney.

The planned WAC cable system will have a design capacity of 6 to 8 Tbps and will connect India, through a landing station in Chennai, to both Malaysia and Singapore. Added protection from cable failure will be offered by the dual landing points in South East Asia.

WAC is also designed to offer the flexibility of extending connectivity into Bangladesh and Sri Lanka through separate branching units, as well as the possibility of a second cable landing point in Mumbai to offer additional capacity to cables landing off the west coast of India.

Chris Wilson, Pacnet’s Senior Vice President of Business Development said “WAC will enable Pacnet to guarantee lowest cost, lowest latency connections between India, Asia and the US, in addition to significantly improving connectivity and costs between Asia and the Middle East and Europe."

Expected to cost an estimated US$150 million the new WAC cable will take approximately two years to construct, with a ready-for-service (RFS) date targeted around early 2012. Currently in discussion with submarine cable suppliers, Pacnet expects to announce the award of the supply contract in early 2010.

Pacnet’s latest initiative comes on the back of its successful application for National Long Distance (NLD) and International Long Distance (ILD) licenses in India. The franchise communications company recently received “Letters of Intent” (LOIs) from the Department of Telecommunications for its NLD and ILD license application and is currently completing the required formalities. Pacnet expects to receive the licenses by the end of 2009.

Pacnet will be building a new PoP in Chennai to serve as an international gateway between India and the rest of Pacnet’s global network and has also commenced upgrading its network Points of Presence (PoPs) across India. Pacnet will be able to deliver its full suite of solutions including Ethernet International Private Line, IP VPN and its comprehensive range of managed services across India on industry-leading Service Level Agreements once this has been completed by the third quarter of 2010.