THAILAND TRAVEL NEWS: People doing business or living in Asia should soon notice a dramatic increase in speed for internet communications between the region and the US when the $US550 million Asia-America Gateway (AAG) comes into operation next month.

The project entered the construction phase in 2006 with AiTi of Brunei Darussalam, CAT Telecom (Thailand), PLDT (Philippines), REACH (Hong Kong), StarHub (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia (Malaysia) and VNPT (Vietnam) signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for its construction.

The AAG comprises a 20,000km (about 12,400 miles) optical fibre cable network stretching from Malaysia to the West Coast of America, via Guam and Hawaii, with branches to Singapore, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam

The cable is one of the longest undersea cable rollouts in history, but will shorten the route for data from Asia to America, avoiding some of the wolds’ areas most prone to seismic activity in the process.

Poor quality communications in the region has been an ongoing problem that has affected development, but with a design capacity of 1.92 terabit/s the international route should have sufficient capacity to meet the regions ever increasing demand.

By John Le Fevre

Thailand Travel News July 25, 2009