TM Wins SKR1M Subsea Cable Project

Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM) has been awarded a contract via an open tender process to develop and construct a new submarine cable system, called Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1Malaysia (SKR1M) by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

The establishment of this new submarine cable system is part of the Government’s initiatives to increase the capacity of high-speed broadband, as outlined by the Prime Minister, YAB Dato’ Sri Mohd. Najib Tun Haji Abd.

Razak in Budget 2014 and 2015.SKR1M will link Peninsular Malaysia with Sabah and Sarawak. The project will be established through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement between MCMC and TM utilising the Universal Services Provision Fund (USP), which is under the purview of MCMC.

SKR1M will serve to enhance the existing domestic submarine cable connectivity between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak thus catering for future bandwidth growth requirements., The new submarine cable system, which will span approximately 3500km, will have an initial capacity of 4 Terabit per second (Tbps).

Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa, Group Chief Executive Officer, TM, commented: “We would like to record our appreciation to the Government and MCMC for awarding this project to TM. This initiative represents another major step towards enhancing the national broadband connectivity within Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. With this partnership, TM as the nation’s broadband champion will be able to expand its service coverage as well as its connectivity domestically to meet the industry’s ever-growing demands for IP applications. This in turn will support future High Speed Broadband (HSBB) deployment, thus bridging the digital divide.”

“The partnership would certainly bring enormous benefits to the nation’s ICT development initiatives, in line with the Government’s Economic Transformation Programme (ETP) for EPP10, “Extending the Regional Network” as well as National Key Economic Area (NKEA) for the Communications Content and Infrastructure (CCI) sector in improving communications infrastructure and the uptake of services. This collaboration also shows TM’s commitment as Malaysia’s trusted ICT partner in propelling Malaysia to become a regional data hub,” added Tan Sri Zamzamzairani.

SKR1M cable system is designed to provide upgradeable and transmission facilities by adopting the state-of-the-art 100Gbps technology. This new submarine cable system is expected to start carrying commercial traffic by mid 2017.

This huge bandwidth will improve the user experience by minimising potential traffic congestion between Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. In addition, this also allows further growth in bandwidth-hungry as well as internet-based applications to flow between these areas smoothly.

TM, well experienced in the domestic, regional and global submarine cable development and investments owns more than 10 submarine cable systems, which span more than 100,000 fiber-route miles around the globe, including several submarine cable routes that the Company uses to carry traffic between Asia-Pacific region and North American region.

Press Release