The information superhighway linking universities in Asia and Europe is set to become faster and wider following a Euro18 million cash (HK$177.21 million) injection.
The Trans-Eurasia Information Network will be extended to at least three more countries in South Asia and its bandwidth will be increased to 2.5 gigabits per second across the whole network, allowing faster transmission of bigger chunks of data. Currently sections within Asia range from 622 megabits per second to 1 gigabit per second .
The European Union is providing Euro12 million and its 10 Asian partners, which include Hong Kong and China, are giving Euro6 million for the upgrade under the next phase of the project, known as TIEN3.
The move was announced at the recent Asia-Europe Meeting in Beijing and was initially due to be formally launched on Monday at an ASEM workshop on information and communications technology for development in Vientiane, Laos.
However, the European Commission announced this week that the event had been cancelled due to the 'situation at Bangkok Airport'.
The existing network, TEIN2, connects 30 million users in 4,000 institutions across Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand to their counterparts in Europe - and to each other. The first high-bandwidth network for universities and research institutes in Asia, it links to Europe via GEANT2, one of the world's most advanced university networks with bandwidths of more than 1,000 gigabits per second in Europe and links to many other regions.