China Mobile deploys new cable linking France and Singapore

The cable also extends to Malaysia and other European countries, and is designed to provide ‘fast, open and flexible’ connectivity between Asia and Europe.

The Chinese operator drafted 11 partners in for the project, and says it is ‘committed to providing neutral, flexible and non-differentiated interconnection services to carriers, OTT service providers and enterprises around the world.’

It makes use of the New Egypt Crossing, which is described as being made up of ‘fully diversified’ terrestrial cables running across Egypt, as opposed to traditional south and north routes. CMI says this enables it to provide bandwidth services with high quality, low latency and high security between the continents.

The operator has now formed three routes between Asia and Europe with the existing AAE-1 and SMW5 submarine cables. It says that the ‘self-built ring systems’ of its fibre optic networks in Singapore, Malaysia and Europe, which connect with data centres across the regions, mean it can customize PoP-to-PoP solutions with ‘highly scalable and flexible bandwidth.’

“CMI has continuously strengthened its international operations in recent years and developed large-scale consumers, carrier and enterprise businesses,” says the release. “With more than 90 submarine and terrestrial cable system resources, connecting 78 countries, total international transmission bandwidth exceeding 150T, 310 overseas PoPs, and self-owned data centers in major cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Frankfurt, CMI provides all-round support for global partners.”

In June, it was reported China Mobile had 502.6 million 5G customers and its overall mobile customer base came in at 998.4 million – representing a take-up of more than 50%.