The SMW4 (Southeast Asia, Middle East and Western Europe) submarine cable network, which is fourth of its kind since 1982, will be about 20,000 kilometres (12,400 miles) long, including the main trunk line and branches, and cost about $500 million to build.

France's Alcatel Submarine Networks and Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. have been chosen as lead contractors in the project.

Chairman of Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) Nurul Islam signed the construction and maintenance agreement for Bangladesh.

Bangladesh will get 10-gigabyte bandwidth, which is enough for its projected internet and telephony demand for the next 10 years. Presently, it consumes only about 150-megabyte bandwidth.

Once connected to the cable, costs of all internet and long-distance telephone calls will come down significantly while surfing the internet will become unbelievingly fast.

The landing station in Bangladesh will be at Cox's Bazar. Telecoms Minister Aminul Haq told reporters yesterday the government has already set up a high-speed cable link between Dhaka and Chittagong. "We will set up similar links between Dhaka, Bogra and Rajshahi. Other divisional headquarters will be connected to the system in the process."

The link, said to be the most

economic system with the latest state-of-the-art technology, will land in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.

"The project will provide unprecedented high speed telecoms links," AFP reported from Dubai quoting UAE Telecoms Minister Ahmed Humaid al-Tayer as saying at the signing ceremony yesterday. "It will also contribute to breaking the digital divide between developed and developing countries."

The cable is expected to become operational in the third quarter of 2005 and will be able to handle 20 million voice calls or 60,000 broadcast television channels at the same time, according to a presentation by Etisalat, the UAE telecoms company.

The SMW4 cable will connect to existing telecoms networks in Europe, according to a France Telecom executive who attended the ceremony.

The French operator has participated in all three previous underwater cable projects. SMW3, the largest one, was completed in 1999 at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion and involves a 39,000-kilometre (24,000 miles) cable network running from China to Germany and serving Japan, Australia, southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Industry players are hoping the start of work on the latest underwater cable will revive the market's appetite for similar projects following the lull in big telecoms investments over the past three years due to the global slump in the industry.

"There were many projects planned but could not be realised due to shortage of investment," Yukio Mizuochi, group vice president at Fujitsu, told AFP.

"We hope this project will lead the market recovery... and meet increased demand from broadband and Internet."