Internet Waterway
KT held the Asia-Pacific Gateway Network Operation Center (APG NOC) opening ceremony on Oct. 21 at its KT Busan International Center. The APG NOC is a control center in charge of the operation of the world’s widest submarine communications network.
KT is going to be responsible for the management and operation of the undersea cable network covering nine Asian countries, taking care of troubleshooting problems and the like as the head of the APG. The APG is an 11,000 km-long optical submarine cable network with a maximum depth of 6,000 m that connects Korea, China, Japan, and other Southeast Asian countries.
According to Internet World Stats data, the nine countries had 900 million Internet subscribers as of the end of 2013, which is equivalent to 69 percent of the 1.3 billion Asian subscribers and 32 percent of the 2.8 billion around the world.
Once the network is completed in late 2015, digital content will be provided for all Web users at much faster speeds, 40 Gbps per wavelength specifically, which is at least twice as fast as that of existing undersea cables. A total of 13 companies in the nine countries are participating in the project, including KT, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, NTT, Starhub, and Facebook.
The APG also has the world’s largest transmission capacity of 38.4 Tbps. It allows five million Koreans to simultaneously watch HD videos at 7 Mbps and 7,000 movie files, 700 MB each, can be transmitted in just one second. KT is expecting that it will be able to create at least 1.1 billion won (US$1.0 million) in profits each year through the management of the APG NOC, along with more network business opportunities abroad.