AAG : Something New ?

Several days ago I was 'googling' for the AAG - Asia America Gateway - submarine cable system. I just want to update myself with (and was expecting to find) some new information about it. Almost one year ago, I heard for the first time about this project just a while after many asian countries were healed / relaxed from the effect of the Taiwan's earthquake on Dec 2006. At that time, I wrote a short article about it in a local newspaper.


Unfortunately I do not find much new information. It seems that currently AAG doesn't have any official websites either.

Sofar, Google provides the following information for the AAG projects:

• The AAG network is owned by a consortium formed by 10 parties including the Government of Brunei, AT&T, Bharti, CAT, PLDT, PT Telkom, Telekom Malaysia, Telstra, StarHub and VNPT (alcatel-lucent.com 09/2007, a different version of the consortium's membership is issued by a press release document from Telekom Malaysia dated 04/2007, which names 17 telcos). It will link Malaysia to the U.S. via Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the West coast of the US (see the picture).
• The AAG is intended to compliment existing cable systems like the Asia Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN 2) & Japan-US Cable Network currently connecting to North America via North Asia. This would increase connection diversity and survivability.
• Maximum design capacity of 1.92 Tbps; initial capacity of 480 Gbps
• one cable (with possibly 8/24 or 4/48)
• Length of the cable : around 20,000 km (half of the length of the equator)
• Contractors : Alcatel-Lucent (ASN), NEC Corporation
• US Landing : the AT&T 03 cable station (San Luis Obispo)
• Investment : ca. USD 500 mio.
• Regeneration distance : 76 km
• Date of service : late 2008
• Minimum lifetime : 25 years

If you look at the picture above, from Indonesia's point of view, it seems that both Telkom and Indosat will use their existing submarine cables to connect to either MY or SG. Telkom might use either its DMCS (Dumai Melaka Cable System) or its TIS cable.