Under the Sea
KT announced on Oct. 22 that it is to take part in the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Project as a coordinator and set up and run a network operation center for the project in Busan City. The purpose of the NCP Project is to form a submarine cable network with a data processing capacity of about 80 Tbps and a total length of approximately 14,000 km across the Pacific Ocean.
The total capacity under KT’s control is scheduled to be increased to 118.4 Tbps, including 38.4 Tbps on the side of the Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) submarine cable connecting Southeast Asia to Northeast Asia. The company’s role in the projects is to provide a backup in case of trouble in the event of cable malfunctioning. The APG and NCP networks are slated to open in 2016 and 2017, respectively. The total capacity of 118.4 Tbps accounts for 27 percent of the submarine cable data capacity of the Asia-Pacific region, and 11 percent of the global total.
These days, 99 percent of cross-border data traffic is carried out by means of submarine cable networks, as more and more data are processed online. At the same time, Internet businesses such as Microsoft and Facebook as well as telecom operators are participating in submarine cable projects based on the recognition of importance.
At present, KT is the chair of each of the consortia for the NCP and the APG and is to play a leading role in every stage, ranging from network design and establishment to operation and management in the programs with a total cost of more than US$1 billion. The NCP consortium consists of KT, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Softbank, CHT, and Microsoft. The APG consortium has 13 members, including China Mobile, NTT, Facebook, and KT.