Chennai: Work on the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited's (VSNL) 3,175 km undersea cable laying project between Chennai-Singapore has commenced. The $100 million project christened Tata Indicom India Singapore System will soon be commissioned during the fourth quarter of this year.

While the initial bandwidth increase will be 320 giga bits per second (gbps), the cable has a total capacity of 5.12 terra bits per second (tbps).

According to Rob Munier, managing director, Tyco Telecommunications (a unit of Tyco Electronics), Global Systems Sales, the company's newly acquired undersea cable laying ship will start work in a week's time at the Chennai end. Two more similar ships - one Korean and the other Chinese - will be involved in the project.

Tyco offers VSNL a warranty period of five years for the cable systems. "That is the industry norm," says Munier. The warranty does not cover cable / repeater damage on account of earthquake and similar acts of nature.

The process of laying of telecom cable undersea starts with the initial feasibility studies including route planning and desktop studies. The route survey will reveal the seabed features and hazards, seafloor sediment layers and structure.

After the route planning and route survey works are over, cables of varying thickness are loaded on to Tyco Durable. The thickest cable will be laid from the beachhead to a point were the chances of damage by fishing vessel, etc, are absent. The cable will be buried using the sea plow. Once deep into the seabed, a thin cable will be laid on the seabed.

Addressing the media on board Tyco Durable VSNL's director (operations) N Srinath, justifies the investment on the ground that the demand for bandwidth will increase from the corporate and retail end. "Upon completion we will be able to sell a full suite of telecom services to our customers and also support our international operations."

With the additional bandwidth capacity VSNL will target corporates, internet service providers (ISP) and even the entertainment industry. "With the Indian diaspora present in the US and Far East the demand for desi television programme is on the rise in those countries. This is an opportunity for us to cash on that emerging market," Srinath adds.

As a result of this cable, VSNL will be able to offer bandwidth for speeds ranging from 2 mbps to 10 mbps. Similarly onward connectivity from Singapore to USA, Japan, Australia is possible for its customers.

In addition, the investment is being made to meet the internal bandwidth demand as the Tata group is planning to expand its dial up internet services to a hundred cities from thirty cities currently.

According to him, VSNL expects to recover the investment made in the undersea project in two years. The cable has a life of 25 years.

VSNL presently has over 10 gbps of bandwidth on its 4 operational submarine cable systems that include SAT3 / WASC / SAFE, SEA-ME-WE3, SEA-ME-WE2 and FLAG.

"VSNL has around 7,000 km of lit optic fibre. After the agreement with Bharti group to use its dark fibre - which will be lit soon - our total optic fibre capacity will go up over 25,000 km," remarks Srinath.