Cambodia’s 1st Undersea Communications Cable to Be Operational Soon

PHNOM PENH— The Cambodia's first undersea communications cable is expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2017, according to a press release on Tuesday.

The Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT) submarine cable is jointly invested by Telcotech (an EZECOM company) of Cambodia, Symphony Communication of Thailand and Telekom Malaysia Berhad, and has been built by China's Huawei Marine Networks, a global submarine network provider, since May last year at the cost of about 70 million U.S. dollars.

MCT cable system spans approximately 1,300 km and will position Cambodia as the gateway to Asia which enables Cambodia to harvest the Asia traffic and extend the connectivity to ASEAN and the rest of the world via Malaysia, the press release said.

It said that the MCT cable system will land in Sihanoukville, Cambodia; Rayong, Thailand, and Kuantan (Cherating), Malaysia, respectively.

"The landing stations in all three countries are completed and ready to receive cable," it said.

The submarine cable will adopt state-of-the-art 100 Gbps technology and will support a capacity of at least 30 Tbps, it said, adding that it will connect to other submarine cable systems, including Telcotech, the sole Cambodian member of Asia-America Gateway and the 20,000 km submarine communication cable that connects South East Asia to the United States.

"We are very excited to announce that Cambodia's first submarine cable is about to arrive and EZECOM will be the first ISP (Internet Service Provider) in Cambodia to own this submarine cable," Yves Schaeffer, chief executive officer of EZECOM, said in a press conference. "We are going to launch landing station building in Sihanoukville on Dec. 16, 2016."