MUMBAI: Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) and pan-Asian telecommunications services provider Asia Netcom have announced a strategic partnership to enhance our connectivity to the Asia Pacific region.

Under the new agreement VSNL's proposed Tata Indicom India-Singapore Cable will land at Asia Netcom's cable landing station in Singapore. The Tata Indicom cable system connecting Chennai and Singapore will be ready for service by the fourth quarter of this yeat.

An official release informs that the new partnership effectively offers VSNL's domestic corporate customers a cost-effective bandwidth solution to Trans-Pacific routes over Asia Netcom's EAC cable system, or all the way to US and Europe.

VSNL MD A K Gupta added, ''With a view of catering our services to the growing requirements of our customers, VSNL is presently investing in a number of next generation submarine cable projects. With Asia Netcom, our wholly owned Tata Indicom cable, will offer enhanced connectivity over the trans-Pacific belt. The new arrangement with Asia Netcom will help us package an end-to-end range of bandwidth solutions for our corporate customers.''

The new 3175 km Tata Indicom submarine cable system will run between Chennai and Singapore. The cable system will have an initial capacity of 320 Gbps with the ability to scale up to its design capacity of 5.12 Tbps. With an estimated operating lifespan of 25 years, the new cable will connect Chennai to Singapore, from where onward extension to the US and other significant geographies is readily available at competitive prices.

Asia Netcom's EAC is a 19,500 km, submarine fiber cable system connecting Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan with 80 Gbps of capacity that is upgradeable incrementally to 2.56 Tbps.

VSNL is in the process of expanding its global presence and is setting up operations in Sri Lanka and the US.