Announced December of 2019, MIST will directly connect Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and India (Mumbai and Chennai) with a design capacity of more than 216Tbps. Construction of the nearly 8,100km optical submarine cable is due to be completed by Q3 of 2022.
"Globally, India and Southeast Asia are among the world's fastest- growing economies. I am very pleased to announce the launch of MIST, providing a truly connected India to our clients around the world, delivering high-quality, low-latency networks to the people in India as the nation charges forward with its digital transformation roadmap," said Yoshio Sato, CEO of Orient Link Pte.
"Not only will MIST respond to the growing demands for inter-DC-connectivity across countries in the Southeast Asia region, but it ultimately allows for OLL to grow its offering and expand into India and beyond. OLL has selected NEC as a supply partner whose extensive experience in expeditiously implementing submarine cable systems will play a key role in our project's success."
The MIST cable systems will take advantage of accelerated digital investment in the Asia region
driven by data centre growth, the proliferation of mobile, 5G services and business expansion of digital platforms, such as SNS, e-commerce and cloud services for enterprises, which has contributed to an increasing amount of data traffic across submarine cables.
Additionally, MIST will further enhance and contribute to the much-needed expansion of communications networks from Asia, thereby improving network redundancy, ensuring highly reliable communications and expanding onward connectivity options in the Bay of Bengal.
"We are honoured to be selected as the supplier for MIST together with our local affiliate in India NEC Technologies India Private Ltd (NECTI),” said Atsushi Kuwahara (pictured), general manager of the submarine network division at NEC.
“In recent years, we have been supplying the majority of submarine cables in the region and this project enables NEC to continue contributing to advanced infrastructure for serving growing traffic demands. Together with NECTI, we intend to fully capitalize on our regional expertise in Southeast Asia and India to ensure the successful completion of this project."
