Saudi Arabia confirms multi-million dollar investement in FALCON

Today's signing follows similar agreements with Bahrain, Egypt, India, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

Once in service, FALCON will enable ITC to provide high-quality, direct international connectivity from the Kingdom's east and west coasts to the global business centres around the world, supporting the roll-out of advanced broadband services throughout the country. The landing station at Dammam and the capacity purchase will provide the first direct access to international networks from Kingdom's east coast, making available full network diversity to enhance service reliability for ITC's customers.

FALCON, a new high-capacity resilient loop cable system is being installed to provide multiple landings throughout the Gulf region, with submarine links stretching from the Middle East to Egypt in the west and, initially, to India in the east. Across India the FALCON system can interconnect seamlessly with India's domestic networks, including Reliance's 80,000 km high-speed domestic infrastructure, allowing customers to access major cities and towns.

In addition to the network diversity provided by the two landing stations, FALCON's loop protection within the Gulf region will, for the first time, also provide added circuit resilience into and out of the Kingdom. These circuits are expected to allow ITC to compete favourably with other regional operators as it seeks to establish pan-Regional activities and investment in overseas markets.

In March this year, ITC was awarded one of the two data licences in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, after which the company won the right to build wired and wireless networks for data services in the Kingdom, including international gateways and exchanges, and to operate, maintain and use these for the provision of data services in the Kingdom.

Dr Mohammed H. Omar, President and CEO of ITC, said: This significant investment in landing stations on the east and west coast and the purchase of capacity on the FALCON is a strategic element in our plans to provide our customers within the Kingdom with reliable, direct international connectivity on one global network. The network diversity provided via the two landing stations, together with the added protection of the FALCON loop system within the Gulf, will greatly assist us in meeting out stated aim of providing our customers with a world-class infrastructure to meet their growing demands for fast Internet and value-added services. FLAG is a leading global provider of international connectivity and we look forward to a strong ongoing relationship with them in bringing global international access to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

Walid Irshaid, President, Middle East and Africa, FLAG Telecom, said: "ITC 's position in the Kingdom's telecommunication market makes it an ideal partner for FLAG as part of the FALCON project . FLAG is committed to meeting the global communications needs of its partners in the region and the formal signing of these agreements marks the start of what I'm sure will be a successful ongoing relationship between our two companies. FALCON is designed to unlock the broadband opportunity in a region previously underserved by international connectivity, bringing a many-fold increase in capacity over existing regional links. It will enable ITC to continue to provide its customers with the advanced services of the new information age and with very high levels of network reliability."

The FALCON system incorporates the Gulf region's first self-healing submarine network ring, providing all countries connected to the high capacity cable with extremely reliable, high quality connectivity. It underlines the growing optimism in today's telecommunications marketplace and provides the backbone to deliver advanced broadband services throughout the Middle East, Egypt and India, which have been traditionally underserved with high-capacity broadband connectivity. Branching units have been added along the entire FALCON cable route to allow additional countries to connect to the system as their communications needs continue to expand.

The FALCON network is being built by Alcatel Submarine Networks, a leading turnkey provider of choice when designing and building complex submarine cable systems such as FALCON. It will be installed in simultaneous sections using several submarine cable laying ships and initial service will commence by the fourth quarter of 2005. FALCON will incorporate comprehensive protection mechanisms to ensure the highest level of network reliability.

FLAG's cable network already spans the globe and the company has an acknowledged reputation for a centralised end-to-end network management underpinned by exceptional quality and service support.