Singtel to launch new subsea cable connecting North Asia with Southeast Asia-Japan
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Singtel to launch new subsea cable connecting North Asia with Southeast Asia-Japan

Singtel is building a new submarine cable system linking Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, Korea and Japan.

The project is a partnership between Singtel, the members of the Southeast Asia – Japan 2 consortium (SJC2) and the NEC Corporation, and will see the 10,500-kilometre submarine cable connect at eleven cable landing stations in the region.

The SJC2 cable is due to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2020 and will be built and operated by a global consortium of telecoms tech companies, including: China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband and VNPT.

“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,” said Ooi Seng Keat, vice president of carrier services at Singtel. “As a new generation multimedia superhighway, the SJC2 can play a pivotal role in facilitating economic cooperation and digital innovation among the countries in this region. The construction of this cable reinforces Singtel’s position as the leading data services provider in the region and strengthens Singapore as a global business and info-communications hub.”

The cable will have eight pairs of high capacity optical fibre with a total capacity of 144Tbps allowing to to support advanced technologies such as the IoT, robotics, data analytics, artificial intelligence and virtual reality applications.

Earlier this year Singtel partnered with Ericsson to demonstrate speeds of 1Gbps on its 4G mobile network. The Singapore operator plans to offer this new service later this year focussing on key high-traffic locations, but the speed will be available only on certain handsets.

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