The consortium for the submarine communication cable system for Southeast Asia and US (SEA-US) has officially announced the commencement of construction on what will be the first submarine cable connecting Indonesia and the US. The project -- which will be conducted by the NEC Corporation and NEC Corporation of America, with total investments reaching US$250 million, is expected to be completed by the end of the fourth quarter in 2016.

The SEA-US global consortium consists of PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), Globe Telecom, RAM Telecom International (RTI), Hawaiian Telcom, Teleguam Holdings (GTA), GTI Corporation (a member of the Globe Telecom group of companies), and Telkom USA.

Telin president director Syarif Syarial Ahmad stated that the construction of the submarine communication cable system was one of the most important steps for meeting the rapid growth of Indonesia's communication needs. He also demonstrates Telin's commitment in providing Indonesia consumers with state-of-the-art technology.

'€œOur objective is now closer with SEA-US, given that it is the first submarine communication cable system with direct connection to USA as the world'€™s internet content source," said Syarif.

The SEA-US submarine cable system will link five areas: Manado in Indonesia, Davao in Southern Philippines, Piti in Guam, Honolulu, Hawaii, and Los Angeles, California, US. The system will be approximately 15,000 kilometers in length, stretching along different routes and specifically designed to bypass earthquake-prone areas in East Asia to maintain stable services.

The cable system will provide additional 20 terabit per second (Tb/s) capacity with a 100 gigabit per second (GB/s) technology. With this capacity, SEA-US will be able to provide for ever-growing bandwidth demand in Southeast Asia and North America with unparalleled performance, especially in ASEAN countries. Through the existing and planned submarine cable system, the SEA-US construction will also benefit other countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Papua New Guinea and Australia.

In the future, the SEA-US construction project will also connect with the SEA-ME-WE 5 (Southeast-Asia - Middle East - Western Europe) project by lilnking Manado and Dumai through the Indonesia Global Gateway (IGG) submarine cable system. Whole submarine cable systems from Telin and its global consortium will also become the embodiment of Indonesia Global Networks (IGN), further showing Indonesia's active role as a "Global Hub" for world telecommunications networks.

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