Asia Netcom and NEC have signed an agreement to double the capacity on the southern segment of its Pan-Asian submarine cable system, EAC.

The EAC system spans 19,500 kilometers within Asia connecting the regions of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and soon, mainland China.

The upgrade on the EAC2 ring of the system, which spans Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and Taiwan, will raise the bandwidth capacity on those routes to 160 Gbps. This will be the third incremental capacity expansion this year for Asia Netcom. Previous upgrades have already more than doubled the capacity on the northern segment of the EAC system.

"The trend forward as more sophisticated applications traverse undersea networks is the steady consumption of bandwidth. This is matched by the stabilizing of prices in the region over the past few months," said Bill Barney, President and CEO, Asia Netcom. "We are confident that this is the upturn the industry has been waiting for."

The project is expected to be completed by November this year and will use NEC's submarine line terminal product which is based on DWDM technology.