Mr Lee Yi Shyan at the Official Launch of Singapore’s Newest Undersea Cable System “Asia-America Gateway”, 8 Dec 09

Speech by Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Trade & Industry and Manpower at the Official Launch of Singapore’s Newest Undersea Cable System “Asia-America Gateway” on 8 December 2009 at 4:45pm at Ritz Carlton Millennia Singapore 

Mr Terry Clontz
StarHub CEO

Distinguished guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good afternoon, I am pleased to be here today to mark the official launch of Singapore’s newest undersea cable system, the Asia-America Gateway (AAG).

We live in a connected world. Events that take place in one part of the globe can sometimes have profound impact on another part of the world. The 2008 financial crisis which started in the United States led to the worst economic crisis the world has known since the Great Depression. Last week’s Dubai World’s debacle too sent shockwaves to the financial markets around the world. Even now, as the world gathers in Copenhagen to grapple with measures needed to save the world from melting icebergs and rising sea level, we are being reminded once more that we are more connected than many have thought.

Anticipating today’s connected world and digital age, the government established the National Computer Board in 1981 to invest heavily in IT infrastructure and the training of IT manpower. In the last three decades, we introduced successive master-plans to develop our IT industry, which in turn accelerated the growth of manufacturing and services industries that leverage on IT. Singapore’s development as a regional IT hub has attracted more IT talent around the region to work here. Our investments in both hard and soft IT infrastructure have made our workforce more productive, and our economy more competitive.

We should continue to do what we can within the island to help our workforce stay at the edge of IT and media technology. In 2006, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore launched the 10-year Intelligent Nation 2015, or iN2015 master plan. The goal is to transform Singapore into a digital global city where technology, infrastructure, enterprise and manpower converge.

More recently, we have started to roll out the implementation of the ultra high-speed Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (NBN). Targeted to complete by 2012, the nation-wide deployment of the Next Gen NBN will bring about even more new and exciting services to businesses and consumers alike.

On the content-creation front, the Media Development Authority launched the Singapore Media Fusion Plan to support the creation of innovative digital content and services in Singapore with global appeal. MDA hopes to develop and attract a critical mass of world-class talents to support a thriving digital content and creative industry here.

However, the ability of our infocomm and media industry to grow vibrantly hinges on us having strong connectivity with major centers of the world where knowledge and new ideas are being exchanged and created in million or terabytes bites by the second. Singapore is only useful if we are a value-adding node to a much larger network of knowledge and wealth creation. As IT and media technology evolve rapidly, we must continually improve Singapore’s connectivity with the world.

It is for this reason that today’s launch of Asia-America Gateway (AAG), is significant. This new infrastructure will reinforce Singapore’s status as a reliable and trusted location in hosting and transmitting mission-critical data. Through redundancy design, AAG providers could also reroute traffic as and when needed to reduce disruptions to business and communications.

By providing more international bandwidths, AAG would help meet rising demand for contents-rich transmission while keeping cost of transmission competitive. These in turn enhance Singapore’s attractiveness for regional and global IT and media companies to be based here.

In conclusion, I would like to congratulate StarHub and its partners for their achievements in building the Asia-America Gateway, the first undersea cable system that links Asia directly to the US.

Thank you.