KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) has joined the Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE-6) undersea cable consortium to build a new submarine cable system.

The SEA-ME-WE-6 will connect Malaysia with Singapore, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Oman, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France.

TM's participation in the consortium was made official with the signing of the construction and maintenance agreement (C&MA) with all consortium members recently.

TM said the SEA-ME-WE 6 would provide the company with one of the lowest latency routes between Malaysia and Europe. 

This 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 100 terabytes per second (TBps), this latest investment will undoubtedly provide the consortium members with complete control over their traffic management," it said.

Group chief executive officer Imri Mokhtar said its investment in SEA-ME-WE 6 would allow TM to address its capacity requirements to cater for increasing future digital demand across Asia and Europe.

This will also allow TM to support the deployment of hyperscalers' data centres as well as the future requirements of 5G network in the country.

"The SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable will land at TM's new cable landing station in Morib, the latest addition to our 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 said the new investment would also help realise TM's aspiration to establish Malaysia as a regional digital hub by facilitating more submarine cables to land in the country.

"This also demonstrates TM's commitment to the MyDIGITAL initiative to attract more international submarine cables to land in Malaysia."

TM is well experienced in both domestic and global submarine cable system development and investments.

"With 30 submarine cable systems owned and leased spanning more than 320,000 kilometres around the globe, TM is committed to providing the highest service performance and best quality experience to all its customers worldwide," he said.

The other SEA-ME-WE 6 consortium members include Bangladesh Submarine Cable Co Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, Dhivehi Raajjeyge Gulhun PLC, Djibouti Telecom SA, Etihad Etisalat, Orange, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, Sri Lanka Telecom, Telecom Egypt and Trans World Associates.