Vietnamese firms co-operate with Facebook on underwater cable

Viettel and VNPT have made agreements with Facebook to co-operate to carry out a USD450-million project called Asia Submarine-cable Express.

Two Vietnamese telecom firms, Viettel and VNPT, have made agreements with Facebook to co-operate to carry out a USD450-million project called Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE).

Ten other telecom companies will also be involved in the implementation: China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom of China; Chunghwa Telecom of Taiwan, South Korea’s KT and LG Uplus, Japan’s NTT Communications; Singapore’s StarHub, Malaysia’s Time dotco and Philippine Long Distance Telephone.

The new network will link Malaysia, South Korea and Japan along with seven other hubs in Asia. There is a potential for the project to be expanded to include Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia and America.

Facebook, the largest investor in the project, have declined to disclose the investment details.

One Singaporean news source, sgentrepreneurs.com, was quoted as saying the initial name of the project was Asia-Pacific Gateway, but after Facebook's involvement was revealed, the project was re-branded as the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE). The initial planned fiber-optic lines of 7,200km grew to over 10,000 km as more countries joined.

The project, scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2014, is hoped to help boost connectivity in Asia.