17 Feb 2004 13:09
By Santosh MenonLONDON (Reuters) - FLAG Telecom unveiled plans on Tuesday for a new undersea cable looping the Middle East and Hong Kong through India, as it looks to tap booming demand for telecoms capacity in those regions.
FLAG, acquired last year by Reliance Infocomm, a unit of India's Reliance group, said the 12,500-km terabit cable, due to be in service in early 2005, was expected to cost over $300 million.
In its main business, FLAG lays cable under the ocean and sells bandwidth to telecoms and Internet firms.
Chief Executive Patrick Gallagher told Reuters that FLAG would bear the funding for the project, called FALCON, with backing from Reliance, India's largest private conglomerate, with interests spanning petrochemicals, refining and telecom.
FLAG said one leg of the cable would travel under the sea from Egypt to Bombay, traversing countries such as Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Qatar and Iraq in the Middle East.
From Bombay, a terrestrial cable owned by the Reliance group will link it to a landing station in the southern city of Madras, from where it will be connected undersea to Hong Kong, where it will join FLAG's global network.
FLAG said initial engineering work on the project had been completed and preparations for a marine survey well under way.
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