Thailand internet users to benefit from Asia-America Gateway connection
Thailand internet users to benefit from Asia-America Gateway connection

THAILAND TRAVEL NEWS: Internet users throughout Thailand should soon see a dramatic decrease in the time needed to access websites located outside of the country after the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT Telecom) yesterday connected to the Asia-America Gateway (AAG).

The $US550 million optical fibre cable network runs more than 20,000km (about 12,400 miles) from Malaysia to the West Coast of America, via Guam and Hawaii, and includes landing points in Hong Kong and the Philippines, with branches to Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam.

Incorporating the latest Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technologies, the AAG has a minimum capacity of 1.28 terabit/s and a design capacity of 1.92 terabit/s and a capacity of 500 Gbytes/s of data.

The AAG project is one of the longest undersea cable rollouts in history and significantly reduces the existing route for data from Asia to America, while also avoiding the hazardous Pacific Ring, one of the wolds most seismically active zones, in the process.

The project has taken more than three years to complete and involved the cooperation and funding from 19 different telcos, including America’s AT&T and Malaysia’s Telekom Malaysia, and CAT Telecom in Thailand.

While the AAG now provides a vastly improved link from the region to the USA, the full benefits will be dependent on internet facilities – cables, routers and bandwidth – operated by individual internet service providers.

The growth of e-commerce and international trade within the region in recent years has seen telcos in countries funding the AAG pour millions of dollars into building internal internet capacity and users throughout Southeast Asia should soon start noticing considerable performance increases.

By John Le Fevre

Thailand Travel News for December 17, 2009




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