KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 21): Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) announced that it is part of a consortium for the latest Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe (SEA-ME-WE 6) submarine cable system that connects Malaysia with multiple countries, namely Singapore, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Oman, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France.

In a statement, TM said its participation in the consortium was made official with the signing of the construction and maintenance agreement with all consortium members recently.

“The SEA-ME-WE 6 joins the list of TM’s investments in submarine cable systems including SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 4, SEA-ME-WE 5 as well as other numerous international cable routes worldwide.

“The SEA-ME-WE 6 will provide TM with one of the lowest latency routes between Malaysia and Europe. It will also create an additional layer of network diversity and resilience for the heavily loaded traffic between Asia and Europe. With its advanced technologies, open cable system concept, and a design capacity of more than 100Tbps, this latest investment will undoubtedly provide the consortium members with complete control over their traffic management,” said the telecommunications company.

Aside from TM, the SEA-ME-WE 6 consortium comprises multiple global players, including Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Ltd (BSCCL), Bharti Airtel Ltd (Bharti Airtel), Dhivehi Raajjeyge Gulhun PLC (Dhiraagu), Djibouti Telecom SA (Djibouti Telecom), Etihad Etisalat Company (Mobily), Orange (France), PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), Singapore Telecommunications Ltd (Singtel), Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT), Telecom Egypt (TE) and Trans World Associates (TWA).

Commenting on the latest investment, TM group chief executive officer Imri Mokhtar said SEA-ME-WE 6 will allow the group to address its capacity requirements to cater for increasing future digital demand across Asia and Europe while continuing to provide reliable, diversified and uninterrupted global connectivity solutions to customers.

Furthermore, it will also allow TM to support the deployment of hyperscalers’ data centres as well as the future requirements of the 5G network in the country, said Imri.

“The SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable will land at TM’s new cable landing station in Morib, the latest addition to TM’s existing four international cable landing stations in the country. Its strategic proximity to Klang Valley, which is close to most hyperscalers’ data centres, positions it as a key cable landing site for Malaysia,” he said.

Imri added that the new investment will help realise TM’s aspiration to establish Malaysia as a regional digital hub by facilitating more submarine cables to land in Malaysia. This also demonstrates TM’s commitment to the MyDIGITAL initiative to attract more international submarine cables to land in Malaysia.

At the time of writing on Monday, TM shares went down 1.26% or seven sen at RM5.48, with a market value of RM20.68 billion.