OREANDA-NEWS. November 16, 2011. Tata Communications, a global communications service provider that owns and operates the world’s largest subsea cable network, and Nawras, Oman’s customer-friendly communications provider, today announced the launch of the Oman to India Tata Global Network-Gulf (TGN-Gulf) cable system. The undersea cable will be used to instantaneously route voice and data traffic from Oman to Mumbai (India) and onwards to the rest of the world, via TGN.

The new cable link offers enormous capacity for broadband and high-quality voice services, enabling Nawras to meet the growing demand for international voice and data services from its customers – be it in the form of calls or internet surfing.

“We are proud to bring a new cable system to Oman in association with Nawras,” says Radwan Moussalli, managing director, Middle East and North Africa, Tata Communications. “The Middle East is fast establishing itself as an emerging market hotspot for business which brings with it the need for solid infrastructure and associated enterprise services that require high-speed bandwidth. This launch is yet another step in our overall strategy to participate and assist in the rapid development of this key region.”

The development forms part of the strategic TGN-Gulf cable project which will connect the Gulf region to the rest of the world, providing reliable high-speed bandwidth to all the key cities in the world. The TGN-Gulf Cable System, acting as a gateway to TGN, will provide a new dimension to the infrastructure and unique service capabilities of each of the partners. Using its own cable stations, each party will have access to a new high-speed global route, adding much-needed resilience and diversity to the infrastructure in each country. The capacity will also help to support the continued expansion of broadband penetration, internet usage and enterprise applications in each market.

“The new cable is an exciting milestone as Nawras will now gain bandwidth to economically meet the ever-growing demand for voice and data services from our valued customers, for mobile and fixed line services. It will also reduce international interconnection costs as well as national and international transmission lease-line costs, while at the same time allowing Nawras total end-to-end quality control. We can also now expand our service portfolio to include international data and transmission services,” says Ross Cormack, CEO, Nawras.

The launch forms part of a strategic roll-out plan to support the development of an extended portfolio of advanced telecommunications services such as global Ethernet, MPLS-based VPN, managed security, infrastructure as a service and global telepresence. All these services are suited to support both local and global enterprises, which are very active in this rapidly expanding emerging market region.

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

Forward-looking and cautionary statements

Certain words and statements in this release concerning Tata Communications and its prospects, and other statements, including those relating to Tata Communications’ expected financial position, business strategy, the future development of Tata Communications’ operations, and the general economy in India, are forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including financial, regulatory and environmental, as well as those relating to industry growth and trend projections, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of Tata Communications, or industry results, to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements include, among others, failure to increase the volume of traffic on Tata Communications’ network; failure to develop new products and services that meet customer demands and generate acceptable margins; failure to successfully complete commercial testing of new technology and information systems to support new products and services, including voice transmission services; failure to stabilize or reduce the rate of price compression on certain of the company’s communications services; failure to integrate strategic acquisitions and changes in government policies or regulations of India and, in particular, changes relating to the administration of Tata Communications’ industry; and, in general, the economic, business and credit conditions in India. Additional factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from such forward-looking statements, many of which are not in Tata Communications’ control, include, but are not limited to, those risk factors discussed in Tata Communications’ various filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Tata Communications is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or alter its forward-looking statements.