New cable to span Africa, Asia, Europe

PCCW Global, an international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications service provider, and 16 other service providers around the world have come together to construct a new and unique high capacity cable system, Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1).

AAE-1 interconnects Hong Kong, Asia, the Middle East, Africa – via Egypt – and Europe with a target service date of 2016.

AAE -1 will be the first high capacity cable system to link all of the major South East Asian nations to Africa and Europe via the Middle East. It will facilitate and provide support for the unprecedented growth of Asia-Africa trade. Providing robust, reliable, low latency connectivity which underpins one of the highest growth and most active global trade routes, AAE-1 will also bring much needed protection and diversity to the existing heavily congested subsea cable systems connecting the various countries along the route.

PCCW Global plans to land the cable at the Cape D’Aguilar Cable Station in Hong Kong, and then extend connectivity to their city data center, making Hong Kong a key telecommunications hub in addition to Singapore and Marseille in France along the AAE-1 network.

Bringing together China Unicom, Telecom Egypt, Etisalat, Omantel, Ooredoo and many other major service providers from around the world, PCCW Global hosted a signing ceremony for the Construction and Maintenance Agreement in Hong Kong on January 27, 2014 to officially mark a new chapter of the AAE-1 Project.

This investment demonstrates PCCW Global’s ongoing commitment to investing in new capacity to support its customers’ needs. PCCW Global operates one of the world’s most diverse, high quality global networks, designed to serve the growing voice and data demands of both global service providers and multinational corporations. PCCW Global’s advanced network underpins a portfolio of innovative network, voice, video and cloud computing solutions designed to connect and facilitate the communications needs of global business.

Mr. Alex Arena, HKT’s Group Managing Director, said, ‚”Our investment in AAE-1 will further enhance our position in Hong Kong as a regional telecommunications hub, and will also improve the ability of PCCW Global’s international cable network to withstand natural disasters such as the massive earthquakes which have occurred in the region over the past few years. It will also help to address the ever-increasing demands of our mobile, data and video customers in Hong Kong who make use of our world-leading quadruple-play services.‚”

Mr. Marc Halbfinger, PCCW Global’s Chief Executive Officer, said, ‚”The AAE-1 project builds on our already extensive strategic cooperation with other consortium members. Not only will the construction of the AAE-1 complement our existing network and ensure added resilience and security, it will also provide us with new and extensive coverage for future expansion. In particular, it will provide much needed capacity to support the rapid growth that we are seeing in cloud computing and Content Delivery Networks (CDN), driven by our strong presence in the media industry. AAE-1 is set to revolutionize communications between Asia and Africa, and the rest of the world, and confirms PCCW Global’s commitment to invest in the region.‚”

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