NEC has been selected to build the new 9,400 kilometre Asia Direct submarine cable connecting China (Hong Kong SAR and Guangdong Province), Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The cable, which is expected to be completed in 2022, is designed to carry 140Tbit/s of traffic, enabling high-capacity transmission of data across the East and Southeast Asian regions. Its high capacity will support bandwidth-intensive applications driven by the expansion of 5G, the cloud, IoT and AI.
The ADC Consortium comprises CAT, China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT Inc, Singtel, SoftBank, Tata Communications and Viettel.
“The ADC system provides the highest cable capacity and necessary diversity for Asia’s key information hubs, which will enable carriers and service providers to better plan their networks and services for a sustainable development,” said China Telecom’s Chang Weiguo, one of the ADC Co-Chairs.
“The new cable will enhance our infrastructure and also our ability to harness new technologies for future growth. Together with the Southeast Asia–Japan Cable 2 system to be completed next year, the Asia Direct Cable will boost diversity and resilience of our global network,” commented Ooi Seng Keat, Singtel’s VP of carrier services, OTT, satellites and group enterprise.
The 10,500 kilometre 144Tbit/s Southeast Asia–Japan Cable 2 (SJC2) is also being built by NEC and is scheduled to be completed in 2021. SJC2 will land in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. The consortium behind that project consists of China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband and VNPT.