KT Corp., the country’s biggest fixed-line service operator, signed a contract with 13 telecoms on Tuesday to form an international consortium that will build a high-speed underwater optical fiber cable that connects nine Asian countries.

KT, together with overseas telecom firms including NTT Communications in Japan and Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, will construct 10,000 kilometer-long optical cable called the “Asia Pacific Gateway,” according to KT officials.

The underwater communications cable, which will be commercialized by early 2014, will connect Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, KT officials said.

The move comes as telecoms predict future demand will soar on delivery of video and 3-D related contents between the countries with the wide adoption of smart gadgets.

The construction of the Asia Pacific Gateway means that the actual delivery speed of data will be 38.4 terabits per second, which equals 7,200 movie files each second, KT officials said.

“(The Asia Pacific Gateway project) will use routes that will minimize damages from natural disasters, such as underwater earthquakes,” said KT executive vice president Kim Sung-man. “The communications cables are expected to meet global telecom demand and help raise South Korea’s profile as the Northeast Asia’s Internet data hub.”

So far, KT has built six different optical cables since 1997 that run through not only Asia but nations in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S. Of them, the fastest is the underwater optical fiber cable constructed between eight nations, including Japan, China and the Philippines, in 2001 and provides a delivery rate of 5.28 terabits per second.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)