CONSTRUCTION NEVER STOP FiberHome Submarine Optical Fiber Cable Solution Contributed to Improve Malaysian Financial Center’s Communication Signal
Sabah, where is called “Lands below the wind”, owns the beach which belongs to one of “the world best three sunset viewing places”, the holy land for diving which is known as “the aquarium of God” and other wonderful travelling resources. Labuan Island, which locates closely to Sabah, is an important international financial center and a new platform for communication and cooperation for the “Belt and Road” initiative in Malaysia.
The existing communication channel between Labuan and Sabah mainly relies on a submarine optical cable constructed 23 years ago, with microwaves as supplementation. With the development of tourism and finance, tourists and employees on Labuan Island often experience poor cell phone signals and even network interruptions. Although online services such as electronic payment have been launched on the island, the experience is greatly affected due to the limitation of network speed and capacity. So, Malaysia Government plans to build a new submarine cable between Labuan and Sabah to solve the problem of poor communication signal.
In 2019, FiberHome took over the New Submarine Construction EPC turkey project of Labuan-Sabah. FiberHome had surveyed the local marine environment and business requirements, and completed designing the customized Submarine Cable routing and products system through marine field survey and desktop research in Dec.2019. In January 2020, FiberHome's Zhuhai Marine Production Base completed the production of the submarine cable for the project. It was originally planned to be shipped immediately after the Malaysian customer completed the factory inspection.
However, the epidemic broken up during Chinese Spring Festival, and Malaysia client couldn’t undertake factory inspection. FiberHome Submarine Cable Unit overcame such difficulties and begun to resume work and successfully finished the factory inspection by lots of online channels which was used to show manufacture process to client. Affected by epidemic, the cable’s shipping schedule had been postponed many times from the mid of Feb. But FiberHome continued to coordinate with ship company and kept tracking the shipping plan and finally took the first ship to Southeast Asia after the outbreak. In early March, FiberHome completed the submarine cable delivery.
However, the epidemic in Malaysia was very serious at that time, and Movement Restriction Order was implemented. The government requires people to quarantine at home, thus the factory stopped manufacturing and construction projects were suspended. Since Sabah was the most severely affected area in Malaysia, the destination port did not have capable receiving resources. FiberHome coordinated to complete the port change, the arrival, unloading and transportation of the goods. FiberHome worked with local partners to apply for amnesty for key communications projects, and was approved by the local government to construct during the epidemic on the premise of ensuring the safety of personnel and the project. FiberHome's construction technical team overcame difficulties during the 14-day quarantine on the island and completed the preparation of ships and equipment. After the quarantine, FiberHome organized the construction in an orderly manner and regularly reported the progress to the government, and finally completed the task within the amnesty period. In May 2020, the Labuan-Sabah submarine cable project was successfully checked and accepted.
From domestic to overseas, and Zhuhai to Labuan, it took one year for FiberHome and Malaysia Client to jointly construct the Labuan-Sabah Submarine Cable Project, and finally great improvement on the communication signal of Labuan island has been seen. Although the epidemic raged during the construction, people's confidence in overcoming difficulties and defeating the epidemic has never wavered.
After the storm comes the gorgeous rainbow,
After the epidemic comes the better signal,
Let’s swim Labuan freely,
Shall we?