Nawras (Omani Qatari Telecommunications Company) has announced the landing of its first sea cable in the Sultanate of Oman.

This milestone event marks the Tata Global Network (TGN) cable in the Gulf connected to the Nawras network by world-renowned T E SubCom.

This new cable link will be fully functional before the end of 2011. It will be used to instantaneously route traffic from Nawras customers in Oman to Mumbai, India and onwards to the rest of the world, via the Tata Global Network.

With this, Nawras becomes the second provider in Oman to directly transmit international traffic. As a result, the Nawras sea cable will contribute to the thriving development of the nation by creating even greater competition in the telecommunications market, to the benefit of customers.

The cable will enable Nawras to economically meet the ever-growing demand for voice and data services from customers using both its mobile and fixed services. Nawras will see a reduction in international interconnection costs as well as national and international transmission lease-line costs.

Once the new cable starts functioning, Nawras will be able to control end-to-end quality for customers, whether they are making calls or using data to send an MMS or surf the Internet.

“With the Tata Communications sea cable carrying traffic, we will not only be raising our quality standards even further but we will also have increased capacity and added reliability,” stated Ross Cormack, chief executive officer, Nawras.

The TGN-Gulf project landing parties are Nawras, Bahrain Internet Exchange (in the Kingdom of Bahrain), Qatar Telecom (Qatar), Mobily (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and Etisalat (United Arab Emirates). 

“The TGN-Gulf Cable System will bring new dimensions to the infrastructure and unique service capabilities of Nawras. Using its own cable station, Nawras will have access to a new global, high-speed route, bringing much needed resilience and diversity to the infrastructure of the Sultanate of Oman. This capacity will enable the expansion of broadband penetration, internet usage and enterprise applications in Oman,” added Radwan Mousalli, MD for Mena, Tata Communications.

The second leg of the sea cable will follow in the near future, he said.-TradeArabia News Service