Alcatel bags Flag Telecom order

Flag Telecom, a Reliance group company, has awarded a multi-million dollar contract for construction of its Falcon submarine cable to Alcatel, a global networks and application service provider.

Under the contract, Alcatel would manage all areas of the cable build, including installation, commissioning and testing, FLAG Telecom said in a release on Tuesday.

The contract has been awarded on a turnkey basis and after an open tender bidding, it said. Falcon network would be built and installed in simultaneous sections using several submarine cable laying ships and initial service would commence by the fourth quarter of 2005, it added.

Alcatel would supply its next-generation Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing submarine line terminals that incorporate advanced optical transmission enabling operators to maximise their efficiency, it said.

The global networking major would install its Optical Multi-Service Node and 1678 Metro Core Connect terrestrial systems to connect with the landing stations, while all terrestrial and submarine equipment would be managed by an integrated network management system, it added.

Survey work of the cable has been completed and most of the necessary permits to land the cable on cross territorial waters have been obtained, it said.

Falcom is a newly-planned, multi-terabit submarine cable network, using DWDM technology. It would have multiple landing stations in Gulf, with submarine links initially stretching to India in the East and Egypt in the West.