CAT Telecom's fibre optic project approved

By The Nation

The economic ministers council today approved CAT Telecom's Bt2.73 billion investment in the underwater fibre optic project in the Gulf of Thailand, to provide a secure and stable communications network particularly for the energy sector.

About Bt2.6 billion would be invested in equipment and the rest as capital reserves.

The network will link two underwater fibre optic stations in Songkhla and Chon Buri. With the dense wavelength division multiplex (DWDM) and repeaters to improve the signalling distance, the network can support the transmission of at least 160 gigabytes per second (Gbps). It will mainly support communications between offshore petroleum rigs and onshore factories.

The project will take two years for completion.

On September 30, CAT Telecom signed a service contract with Chevron Thailand Exploration and Production Ltd and Chevron Offshore (Thailand) Ltd, Thailand's largest oil and gas producers, subsidiaries of Chevron Corporation, to provide fiber optic network services to connect their offshore Central Processing Platforms (CPPs) in the Gulf. The system will initially link the information systems of the eight CPPs with the two landings in Sri Racha in Eastern Thailand and Songkhla in Southern Thailand.

The agency based the investment sum on the assumption that it would provide service contracts to two companies. In the document for the economic ministers, it said if only one contract is signed, the agency would reduce the investment sum to Bt2 billion (Bt1.9 billion for equipment and Bt96 million for reserves).

-- The Nation 2011-01-24

Wonder if they will have protection routes done, link the substations by using the fibre optic cables in rings to decrease outages.

Shame they have not got something like this for the rest of us!!!!!!

Shame they have not got something like this for the rest of us!!!!!!

Interesting. Presumably they'll link up with FLAG in Songkhla - but I wonder if that means we'll get more bandwidth out of Thailand over FLAG, as a result of this link? Presumably Chevron is committed to some sort of payment, in exchange for guaranteed bandwidth. Wonder if any of the increased bandwidth will be available to the rest of us?