KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysia still has the opportunity to participate in the economic and trade activities, and benefit from the recently announced subsea cable project despite losing the chance to be included in its infrastructure, an analyst said.
Tech analyst Bobby Varanasi said Malaysia has not lost anything significant in terms of not having a cable landing on its shores, as it still could leverage on other opportunities.
“What I think Malaysia can do is benefit from the larger business opportunity, especially the growth in gross domestic product (GDP) across the region that will cross-pollinate into Malaysia as well,” he told Bernama TV’s Mid-day update programme today.
On Tuesday, Facebook and Google announced that they will participate in the Apricot subsea cable system project across the Asia Pacific, along with regional and global partners.
The 12,000km-long cable will connect Guam, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan but will skip Malaysia along its route.
Varanasi noted that the subsea cable project is not only going to complement the countries involved but also enable cross-border trade in a much smoother fashion and more productive way.
“Malaysia has already been set up in the context of having bilateral and multilateral agreements with all the countries involved in the project, especially in Asean, and that opens up more trade opportunities.
“This cable project is supposed to showcase modern technologies when it comes to data transmission that we have never had in the past,” he added. – Bernama, August 18, 2021
