A new generation multimedia highway connecting Southeast and North Asia will soon be provided with the laying of a high-performance submarine cable. The 10,500-km submarine cable will connect Singapore with Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, South Korea and Japan.
Making this announcement, Singtel said, “The telco and the members of the Southeast Asia-Japan 2 consortium (SJC2) signed an agreement with NEC Corporation today to build the cable.”
The submarine cable will link 11 cable landing stations in the region and is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2020. It will support the requirements of advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things, robotics, data analytics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality applications.
The cable will have eight pairs of high capacity optical fibre with a total capacity of 144 terabits per second, roughly the equivalent of simultaneously streaming 5.76 million ultra-high definition videos every second.
The SJC2 cable will be built and operated by a global consortium comprising telecommunications and technology companies, including China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband and VNPT.
Ooi Seng Keat, vice-president of carrier services at Singtel, said, “The construction of SJC2 cable is timely and will provide additional bandwidth between Southeast and North Asia, whose combined population of more than two billion are driving demand for data as their economies undergo digital transformation.”
In April 2017, Singtel and its partners announced the construction of the 9,000km INDIGO submarine cable connecting Singapore to Perth and Sydney, Australia.
In December 2016, Singtel and a consortium of 17 global partners also completed the 20,000km Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 cable.
The company Singtel continues to invest strategically in its international connectivity. In April 2017, Singtel and its partners announced the construction of the 9,000-kilometre INDIGO submarine cable connecting Singapore to Perth and Sydney, Australia.
In addition to this, Singtel and a consortium of 17 global partners completed the 20,000-kilometre Southeast Asia – Middle East – Western Europe 5 cable in December 2016.