Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) of India and Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) signed a Construction and Maintenance Agreement to build the Bharat Lanka optical fiber submarine cable between India and Sri Lanka, the Daily News reported Tuesday.

Chairman SLT, Anil Obeyesekere said that this cable would lead to additional revenue to the company. Profits generated from the SLT international call tariffs would be utilized for this investment.

Chairman and Managing Director of BSNL, A. K. Sinha, said that this cable can be used for over 20 years and they hope to recover their investment in eight to ten years.

This submarine cable system will be established between Tuticorine (India) and Mount Lavinia (Sri Lanka) with the planned commissioning date being the early of Second Quarter 2006.

The agreement comes in the wake of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which was signed between BSNL and SLT last year, for a submarine cable system between the two countries.

An analogue microwave link between India and Sri Lanka was initially established in 1980.

Source: Xinhua