KT named to manage Asia's submarine cable

Telecommunications giant KT said Tuesday it has been named as the chief operator of a monitoring center for a submarine cable linking nine Asian countries, dubbed the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG).

KT said it will be in charge of running the network operation center (NOC) for the cable, which will connect Korea to Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and other countries. The cable is due to be laid by the end of 2014.

One of the key advantages of the new cable is that it will give Asian countries a more efficient method to route traffic to North America amid an explosive growth in demands for data-heavy devices ranging from smartphones to tablets.

"We won the deal thanks to our expertise and proven track record in submarine cable management," said KT spokesman Seung-hyuck Jeong.

Jeong said under the agreement, KT, led by CEO Lee Suk-chae, will fix potential systemic errors and control disasters. "That literally means that KT will play the role as the 'control tower' for the cable," said the spokesman.

In a statement, KT said the controls to be used for the submarine cable were certified on September 6.

"KT is the industry's first to receive the authorization in that segment, meaning our solutions are ideally-positioned to handle this business," added the spokesman.

KT has been active in boosting its investment to the project as it believes that the cable will pave the way for the firm to grow its content business, which KT identified as one of its new cash generators.

"Our investment in this cable project will significantly help diversify the corporate business portfolio with generating profit from non-telecom business," he said.

The APG project is being managed in the form of a consortium.

Joining China Telecom and China Unicom are a number of other Asia Pacific-based telecom companies including China Mobile, Chunghwa Telecom, NTT DoCoMo, LG Uplus, Vietnamese Posts & Telecom Group, Viettel, TOT Public, CAT Telecom Public and StarHub. The length of the cable is set to be 9,600 kilometers.

KT is cutting its reliance on the saturated local telecom market by shifting its focus to promising and lucrative solution-related business areas.

Among major carriers in Korea, which include the market leader SK Telecom, KT is the furthest in overseas projects.

2013/10/05 08:46:02 Source：Korea Times

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