US Ambassador Chung visits South Asia’s First Submarine Cable Depot, a joint venture between SLT-MOBITEL and IOCPL

Reiterating SLT-MOBITEL’s crucial role in connecting Sri Lanka to the world, the National ICT Solutions Provider recently hosted US Ambassador Julie Chung for a visit to South Asia’s First Submarine Cable Depot, located in Galle.

SLT established Galle Submarine Cable Depot Pvt Ltd, a joint venture with Indian Ocean Cable Ship Pte Ltd which in turn is a joint venture between Singapore Telecom and Orange Marine of France. The Depot started operations in 2018 and is the only one of its kind in South Asia. The cable repair ship Asian Restorer is stationed in Galle as part of the facility. The strategic location of the Depot enables swift submarine cable repair and maintenance work in the region as all submarine cables from Europe to Asia and Far East run within close reach of Galle. The Depot stores spare cables as well as tools and test equipment required to repair mid sea submarine cable faults.

Conducting the tour for Ambassador Chung and Economic Unit Head Phillip Loosli were Rohan Fernando – SLT Group Chairman, Lalith Seneviratne – SLT Group CEO, Janaka Abeysinghe – SLT CEO, and senior management of SLT Mobitel.

SLT-MOBITEL has continually expanded its global footprint, strengthening Sri Lanka’s connectivity through five international submarine cable systems namely SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 4, SEA-ME-WE 5, Bharat Lanka and Dhiraagu-SLT. Enhancing SLT-MOBITEL’s global network connectivity is the proposed SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable system that will run between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Designed with a capacity of transferring more than 100 Terabits of data per second, it is scheduled to be completed by in 2025.

The commissioning of the new cable system is pivotal to SLT-MOBITEL’s plans to focus on supporting rich media and video content in the future. The cable network is a vital component of SLT-MOBITEL’s 5G network as well in providing low latency machine to machine communications for the industries. The investment in SEA-ME-WE 6 cable has moved Sri Lanka’s global connectivity capacity to the next level – with Terabits of capacity; ensuring that Sri Lanka, through SLT-MOBITEL, is geared to take on the anticipated exponential growth in data traffic.