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Tag: Subsea cables

  • Mobily to Add 140 Tbps Red Sea Cable Between Saudi Arabia and Egypt

    Mobily to Add 140 Tbps Red Sea Cable Between Saudi Arabia and Egypt

    At Submarine Networks World 2026, Mobily Chief Wholesale Officer Adel Alaskah detailed plans for the Mobily Red Sea Cable, which will add 140 Tbps of capacity between Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

    The wholly Saudi-owned cable will connect Duba with Sharm El Sheikh, opening an east-west route toward Europe for hyperscalers, OTT platforms, and network operators.

    Building Route Diversity on the Red Sea Corridor

    Mobily operates four subsea gateways across two coasts to handle transit between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. In Jeddah, the carrier ties into Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) alongside the TGN-EA and SEACOM systems. At Al Khobar on the eastern coast, it routes regional traffic through TGN-Gulf.

    Northern landings handle heavier long-haul transit. Mobily serves as the domestic landing party and consortium member for the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable at Yanbu. Its Duba station hosts the Africa-1 system, which landed in 2025.

    Wholesale Capacity for Hyperscalers and Asian Carriers

    Asian telecom operators and cloud providers face chronic bottlenecks along traditional Red Sea transit points. Duba to Sharm El Sheikh gives international carriers a bypass path. The route runs independently of existing lines through Jeddah.

    This build shifts wholesale dynamics across the Gulf. Mobily is pairing subsea landings with local data centers and domestic backhaul fiber. The goal is keeping regional computational workloads inside the Kingdom instead of losing hosting revenue to hubs in Europe or East Asia.

    Sovereign Infrastructure and Regional Digital Hubs

    National infrastructure targets drive the project under Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 economic program. The framework prioritizes digital sovereignty alongside non-oil commercial growth. Hyperscalers, over-the-top content platforms, and regional internet service providers need low-latency transit backed by neutral terrestrial interconnection.

    Mobily pitches its four-station network as a unified gateway rather than standalone landing contracts. The strategy mirrors competing investments from Gulf operators trying to capture data flows between Singapore, Mumbai, and European financial centers.

    Expanding Physical Landings Beyond Yanbu

    Landing rights secured on major international consortium cables over the past decade laid the groundwork for the network. Integrating Africa-1 at Duba in 2025 provided the northern anchor point now paired with the Egyptian link.

    Future capital deployments will target local data center builds, domestic fiber expansion, and sovereign artificial intelligence hosting clusters. Delivery timelines for optical activation on the 140 Tbps Red Sea span will dictate when wholesale carriers can switch active commercial loads onto the corridor.

  • SUBCO Unveils 24,000-Kilometre Indo-Pacific Subsea Cable Network for AI Traffic

    SUBCO Unveils 24,000-Kilometre Indo-Pacific Subsea Cable Network for AI Traffic

    Australian digital infrastructure operator SUBCO will build three subsea cable systems spanning 24,000 kilometres across the Indo-Pacific by 2029. The network will carry surging artificial intelligence data traffic.

    Each of the three links will feature 24 fiber pairs connecting Australia, Japan, Guam, the United States, Singapore, and Indonesia.

    Three routes across 24,000 kilometres

    The build program divides into three lines named APX North, APX East-2, and APX West. Together, they create a multi-point transit web across Asian commercial centres and trans-Pacific landing points.

    APX North runs 9,500 kilometres from Sydney to Japan by way of Guam. It is the first hypercable connecting Australia directly to the Guam interconnection hub. It also provides the first direct commercial line between Australia and Japan.

    Connecting Guam and Los Angeles, APX East-2 spans 10,000 kilometres. SUBCO designed the link to carry trans-Pacific traffic between Asian markets and the United States, while routing data into Australia and Japan via APX North.

    Across Southeast Asia, APX West covers 4,600 kilometres between Perth and Singapore. The system includes dedicated branches into Jakarta and Batam in Indonesia.

    Direct links bypass traditional hubs

    On APX North, switched branching units sit along the deep-sea route. This equipment allows operators to direct selected fiber pairs straight between Australia and Japan without landing traffic on Guam. That cuts transit latency for direct users.

    Similar switching architecture runs across APX West in Southeast Asia. Customers can route traffic in and out of Batam and Jakarta to tap local compute clusters, or bypass them entirely when routing directly into Singapore data centres.

    “People have been slow to understand that AI factories are dead without massive subsea connectivity to carry tokens from factory to customers. Hundreds and hundreds of terabits per second,” Slattery said.

    Bandwidth race shifts to artificial intelligence

    Hyperscale cloud operators and Asian enterprise tech groups are realigning their balance sheets toward dedicated AI processing clusters. Those computational facilities require continuous, high-volume data pipes to exchange training datasets and model outputs across regions.

    Retail networks, regional logistics platforms, and financial institutions across Southeast Asia rely on cloud-hosted algorithmic models for daily inventory, pricing, and fraud detection. Any bottleneck in trans-Pacific or Southeast Asian trunk capacity directly caps how fast those platforms process transactions.

    Adding 24-fiber-pair capacity along routes that previously relied on older cables reduces reliance on congested transit corridors through the South China Sea and Luzon Strait. The primary operating risk sits in naval installation logistics. Specialized cable-laying vessels face tight global scheduling constraints.

    Vessel deals and contract milestones

    The three cables form the core of SUBCO’s broader target to lay more than 40,000 kilometres of subsea fiber across the Indo-Pacific in just over three years. The company previously built the 9,800-kilometre Oman Australia Cable, establishing direct connectivity between Perth and Muscat.

    Management is finalizing cable manufacturing contracts and vessel charter agreements. SUBCO targets Contract in Force status for APX North, APX East-2, and APX West by early 2027 ahead of the planned 2029 operational launch.

  • Digital Realty and BW Digital to Build 1.6 Pb/s Subsea Cable Linking Singapore and Batam

    Digital Realty and BW Digital to Build 1.6 Pb/s Subsea Cable Linking Singapore and Batam

    Digital Realty executives outlined plans this week to expand distributed digital infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific region, connecting core hubs in Singapore with growing capacity markets in Indonesia and Malaysia.

    Developed with BW Digital, the Nongsa-Changi Cable System will deliver more than 1.6 petabits per second of capacity. The line connects Singapore’s SIN12 data center directly to Batam’s NDP1 facility with a targeted latency of less than two milliseconds.

    Digital Realty’s Wilfried Dudink and Govind Choudhary noted that subsea connectivity is becoming integral to artificial intelligence deployments as operators split localized inference from large model training across regional hubs.

    Splitting Training From Inference

    Workload requirements have split sharply over the past two years. Training foundational models demands contiguous megawatts of power and heavy cooling capacity. That creates bottlenecks in land-constrained cities. Inference tasks, by contrast, must sit beside enterprise users and sovereign data stores to prevent latency.

    New software frameworks like Nvidia NeMo support model training across physically separated sites. This turns subsea optical lines into direct extensions of internal data center architecture. Digital Realty is adding fiber density to feed these distributed pipelines. Its KUL10 facility in Malaysia now hosts over 6,000 cores of long-haul and regional fiber.

    As capacity develops across Southeast Asia, we increasingly see Singapore serving as a connectivity and governance hub for the region, hosting latency-sensitive and sovereign workloads in the city-state while neighboring markets provide greater capacity for larger compute and AI need.

    Subsea Links Shift Border Economics

    Landing agreements and cross-border latency targets are reshaping industrial land values. Johor in southern Malaysia and Indonesia’s Riau Islands have absorbed billions of dollars in campus commitments. Hyperscalers want cheaper land and faster utility approvals. Still, isolated compute parks face severe limits without low-latency ties back to Singapore.

    Enterprise buyers and regional logistics groups now face altered vendor choices. Companies building automation tools cannot rely on distant data centers without lag. Sub-two-millisecond links to Batam and multi-fiber routes to Kuala Lumpur solve this problem. Tenants can maintain compliance within national borders while tapping shared regional models.

    Operational risk now clusters along busy maritime corridors. Routes through the Malacca Strait and Singapore Strait face dense ship traffic. Cable armoring, diverse routing, and rapid repair access have become critical commercial factors for operators promising uptime.

    Enterprise Constraints Across APAC

    Urgency is mounting as corporate IT budgets shift from pilot trials to production systems. Operators must supply liquid-cooled racks for high-density hardware. Older raised-floor sites cannot handle these power draws.

    Digital Realty survey data covering 2,131 global technology leaders shows 40 per cent view physical infrastructure shortages as their primary roadblock, up from nine per cent in 2024. The study found 88 per cent of organizations run distributed architectures. Meanwhile, 86 per cent pursue sovereign data deployments to meet local regulations.

    Spending plans reflect that push. Enterprise respondents forecast an average 32 per cent jump in artificial intelligence budgets over the next twelve months. Fully 79 per cent plan live deployments before late 2026. Nearly two-thirds expect measurable returns on compute investments within six to 24 months.

    Next Deployments and Power Demands

    Network builds outside Asia follow a similar blueprint. In Turkey, a joint venture with Ronesans Infrastructure will deliver a 22-megawatt carrier-neutral campus in Ankara by 2028. Planned expansions in Istanbul will link Mediterranean traffic with Asian routing tables.

    Across Asia, expansions are underway in India, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Australia. Engineering teams are retrofitting existing halls and designing greenfield facilities. These sites accommodate direct-to-chip liquid cooling alongside high-airflow layouts for dense racks.

    Delivery timelines on the Nongsa-Changi cable route and power hookups at satellite sites present the next hurdles. Corporate IT teams are shifting over half of their private compute workloads into dedicated cloud environments. Handover dates across 2026 and 2027 will decide which regional hubs secure those incoming workloads.

  • Autonomous Robots Deploy Across Asia to Monitor 19,200-Km Cable Routes

    Autonomous Robots Deploy Across Asia to Monitor 19,200-Km Cable Routes

    Subsea cable operators across Asia-Pacific are turning this week to resident autonomous robots and long-range underwater vehicles from firms including Kongsberg, Greensea IQ, and Nauticus Robotics to monitor thousands of kilometres of critical digital infrastructure. Conventional vessel inspections are giving way to seabed-docked machines capable of operating for 15 days continuously at depths reaching 6,000 metres.

    The shift targets vast communication arteries across the region, including the 19,200-kilometre SEA-ME-WE 6 cable connecting Southeast Asia to Western Europe with a design capacity of 126 terabits per second. Maintaining continuous surveillance over links of that scale has made traditional ship-based inspection crews prohibitively slow and expensive for regional network consortia.

    Permanent Docking and Local Processing

    Under the emerging operating model, robotic units remain stationed on the ocean floor inside dedicated docking cradles rather than deploying from surface support craft. These resident units recharge batteries, offload telemetry, and receive updated mission routes directly through subsea connection points before returning to patrol nearby cable landing corridors.

    Edge computing systems on board the vehicles process acoustic readings, sonar scans, and high-resolution optical imagery locally instead of streaming raw files to land. The robots compare real-time seafloor scans against recorded baselines, flagging unburied cables, anchor dragging risks, or seabed displacement before transmitting targeted alerts to network operating centers.

    Hardware manufacturers are scaling the range of these autonomous platforms to meet commercial requirements. Kongsberg has deployed its HUGIN Endurance platform, which covers up to 2,200 kilometres on a single 15-day mission without surface vessel guidance. Meanwhile, the Eelume system, built in partnership with Kongsberg Maritime and Equinor, uses permanent subsea docking stations to conduct continuous structural intervention and inspection tasks.

    Expanding Reach Across Southeast Asian Waters

    Deployment activity is concentrating in shallow straits and dynamic coastal waters where commercial ship traffic poses constant hazards to subsea infrastructure. Greensea IQ has partnered with regional marine service firms to deploy rugged seabed crawlers across nearshore zones and surf corridors in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

    Nauticus Robotics has expanded operations in Asia-Pacific to pitch tetherless, autonomous inspection vehicles directly to offshore energy and telecommunications operators. Their systems target lower operating expenditures and lower carbon footprints by cutting reliance on diesel-burning surface vessels during routine surveys.

    China operates the largest deep-sea robotics program in the region, running autonomous vehicles through national research institutes for pipeline verification, marine surveying, and mineral exploration at extreme depths. Those state-backed platforms provide domestic network operators with specialized survey fleets capable of mapping difficult deepwater trenches across East Asia.

    Operating Risks and Capital Demands

    For telecoms consortia and cloud infrastructure providers, relying on permanent subsea robotics removes the scheduling bottlenecks of chartering specialized inspection ships. Vessels often take weeks to mobilise after an outage, leaving high-capacity data routes exposed to prolonged downtime while repair teams locate damage manually.

    The financial risk lies in the high capital cost of seabed docking stations and autonomous fleets before operational reliability is proven across multi-year deployments. Saltwater corrosion, power delivery failures at docking nodes, and navigation drift in turbid coastal channels can strand expensive autonomous assets on the seabed, requiring emergency recovery missions that erase projected operational savings.

    Regulatory ambiguity across contested waters also creates immediate hurdles for automated underwater vehicles. Operating autonomous survey craft across overlapping maritime boundaries in Southeast Asia raises sovereignty and permitting questions, particularly when robotic patrols approach foreign exclusive economic zones or dual-use subsea landing sites.

    Deepwater Capacity and Next Deployments

    Regional network groups had previously managed subsea maintenance almost entirely through episodic ROV charters arranged through regional marine maintenance agreements. Rising demand for real-time cloud connectivity and artificial intelligence data processing has pushed infrastructure managers to treat seabed surveillance as an active, continuous operation rather than an ad hoc repair task.

    That pressure is accelerating as new regional links enter construction, including the 8,000-kilometre XLSMART cable system connecting Southeast Asia directly to Japan. Consortia backing these high-capacity routes are structuring long-term maintenance budgets around autonomous robotic coverage to safeguard data flows across critical maritime choke points.

  • Mobily Unveils Digital Transit Route Linking Asia, Europe, and Africa

    Mobily Unveils Digital Transit Route Linking Asia, Europe, and Africa

    Saudi telecom operator Mobily presented its intercontinental digital infrastructure plan linking 3 continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa, at the Submarine Networks World conference in Singapore this week.

    Chief of Wholesale Adel Alaskah outlined the carrier’s deployment of subsea cable landings and terrestrial links designed to handle rising transit volumes between East Asia and Western hubs.

    Transcontinental Route Architecture

    The network model anchors traffic across Saudi Arabia’s dual coastlines on the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. By bridging both bodies of water with cross-country terrestrial fiber, the operator offers carriers an alternative to congested legacy maritime passages.

    Subsea cable landings feed directly into domestic data centers and cloud facilities. This setup allows transit traffic to interface directly with cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads rather than serving only as passive passthrough bandwidth.

    Transit Competition Across the Indian Ocean

    Wholesale capacity buyers in Asian hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong face persistent bottleneck risks along traditional routes through the Malacca Strait and the Suez Canal. Mobily is competing directly with regional Gulf incumbents and global consortia to capture enterprise and hyperscaler traffic bound for European exchanges.

    For Asian carriers, route diversification reduces exposure to physical cable cuts and geopolitical choke points. The primary commercial risk rests on transit pricing and latency guarantees, where Gulf overland routes must prove competitive against all-sea paths.

    Integration with AI and Cloud Capacity

    Wholesale operators across Asia have shifted focus from basic raw bandwidth sales to high-density compute interconnection. Mobily framed its geographic link as a foundational layer for regional artificial intelligence clusters requiring fast access to multi-region cloud availability zones.

    Hyperscale cloud providers continue building out redundancy across Southeast Asia, driving sustained demand for diverse westward pathways out of Singapore.

    Next Steps on Cable Landings

    The operator is marketing capacity to international carriers and consortium members negotiating upcoming cable builds across the Indian Ocean basin. Mobily wholesale teams are scheduled to hold bilateral interconnect talks with Asian network operators through the final quarter of the year.

  • XLSmart Begins Work on 8,000-Kilometer Subsea Cable Linking Southeast Asia to Japan

    XLSmart Begins Work on 8,000-Kilometer Subsea Cable Linking Southeast Asia to Japan

    Indonesian operator XLSmart has started construction on Candle, an 8,000-kilometer subsea fiber network. The route links Indonesia to Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan. Commercial operations will begin across all six markets in 2028.

    Consortium partners backing the system include Meta, SoftBank, Telekom Malaysia through its TM Technology Services unit, the Philippines’ Globe Telecom, and Japan’s IPS Inc. NEC Corporation will supply the marine transmission equipment. It will deploy 24 fiber pairs along the seabed.

    The Route Through Batam

    Candle lands in Indonesia at Tanjung Bemban on Batam island. That puts the cable directly opposite Singapore’s main data exchanges. Batam serves as a spillover hub for data centers and cross-border transit links while Singapore limits domestic power allocations.

    Crews have finished initial marine work and landing preparations at the site. The route gives carriers a fresh corridor for cloud, enterprise, and artificial intelligence traffic between Southeast Asian cities and East Asia.

    PT XLSMART Telecom Sejahtera Tbk is handling local operations and Indonesian regulatory filings. This is one of the operator’s major capital programs following the merger of PT XL Axiata Tbk and PT Smartfren Telecom Tbk.

    Wholesale Capacity and Route Diversity

    For regional enterprises and cloud platforms, Candle adds physical diversity away from congested legacy routes. Extra subsea lines protect against cable cuts and geopolitical friction across the South China Sea and Luzon Strait.

    Wholesale buyers gain dedicated capacity instead of leasing space on older multi-party systems. The link also expands Meta and SoftBank’s owned transmission assets between Southeast Asian hubs and Japanese internet exchanges.

    Enterprise demand across Jakarta, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur continues to drive direct subsea investment into domestic carriers. XLSmart Director and Chief Enterprise Business Officer Andrijanto Muljono said: “Candle represents a strategic investment to prepare for Indonesia’s long-term connectivity needs.”

    Consortium Lineup and Build Steps

    Planning for Candle began in late 2025 with founding members Meta, SoftBank, IPS, Telekom Malaysia, XLSmart, and NEC. Globe Telecom joined the group in April 2026 as an equity investor and the landing partner for the Philippines.

    Each landing partner oversees shore-end work, territorial water permits, and domestic terminal stations. Teams have moved from desktop studies to physical landing milestones, while NEC manufactures the cable.

    With 24 fiber pairs, Candle ranks among the highest-capacity regional systems in Asian waters. Most older subsea infrastructure in the corridor operates on 8 to 16 fiber pairs.

    Regulatory Hurdles and Timelines

    Permit applications are advancing across all six landing jurisdictions. Marine surveys, cable-laying contracts, and deep-water work must clear national maritime agencies before installation vessels lay the main trunk lines.

    On Batam, the landing station must connect directly with domestic terrestrial backbones across Java and Sumatra to carry traffic inland. Consortium engineers will run dry testing and wet plant commissioning through late 2027 before opening the system to commercial traffic in 2028.

  • Japan Offers 50 per Cent Subsidy to Rebuild Subsea Cable Fleet

    Japan Offers 50 per Cent Subsidy to Rebuild Subsea Cable Fleet

    Japan’s Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry will subsidize half the construction cost of new subsea cable-laying ships. The vessels secure routes carrying 99 percent of international data traffic.

    Funding is part of a broader JPY 2.4 trillion public and private investment plan running through fiscal 2040. The plan will expand undersea networks and replace an aging domestic fleet. Japanese operators currently maintain just five cable-laying vessels weighing more than 5,000 tons. Three belong to NTT Group. Two belong to a KDDI subsidiary.

    Aging tonnage and foreign charter risks

    Specialized cable ships deploy remotely operated seabed vehicles and maintain transoceanic lines. They carry thousands of kilometers of coiled fiber in onboard tanks. These hulls carry an operational life expectancy of roughly 40 years. Several Japanese ships have passed 30 years in service. That age creates rising maintenance costs and reliability concerns.

    Carriers in the United States and Europe operate larger, newer fleets. These allow faster deployment schedules. Japanese telecommunications groups face tighter construction windows and strict order requirements when contracting repairs or new routes. Regional data links are left exposed during outages.

    The 2.4 trillion yen rollout

    Tokyo designated information and telecommunications as one of 17 strategic national sectors alongside artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and defense. Financial backing follows the revised Economic Security Promotion Law passed in June. Under the policy, the ministry can fund up to 50 percent of shipyard build costs for qualifying private operators.

    Subsea lines carry data traffic generated by cloud platforms and generative artificial intelligence clusters across East Asia. The Japanese government wants domestic carriers to control physical installation assets. This avoids dependence on international charter pools during geopolitical or supply chain disruptions.

    Imbalance across the supply chain

    A domestic fleet deficit contrasts with Japan’s manufacturing strength. NEC Corporation controls approximately 20 percent of the global undersea cable manufacturing market. The company owns zero cable-laying vessels. It relies entirely on leased foreign ships to install hardware.

    This divide between cable manufacturing and maritime installation creates cost volatility. Leased vessels command high charter rates and rigid booking calendars. NTT, KDDI, and NEC are evaluating whether to order newly built hulls or execute extensive refits on existing hulls to qualify for state funding.

    What comes next for shipyards and carriers

    June’s revised Economic Security Promotion Law established the legal framework. In July, the cabinet’s growth strategy committed the JPY 2.4 trillion target through 2040. Those steps cleared the path for the ministry’s budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.

    Shipbuilding allocations and vessel specifications depend on final budget approval in parliament. Japanese carriers must then secure shipyard slots in domestic yards already contending with tight commercial delivery schedules.

  • Southeast Asia Targets USD 11 Billion Subsea Cable Expansion for Route Redundancy

    Southeast Asia Targets USD 11 Billion Subsea Cable Expansion for Route Redundancy

    Telecommunications operators and infrastructure investors are committing USD 11 billion between 2026 and 2035 to build new subsea cable systems across Southeast Asia. The spending will expand the number of active intra-Asian cable lines from 14 in 2025 to 19 by 2035, securing international data bandwidth for regional digital economies and hyperscale cloud providers.

    Submarine cables handle more than 99 per cent of international communications traffic in hubs such as Singapore. Under the city-state’s Digital Connectivity Blueprint, authorities plan to double the volume of subsea cable landings over the next decade, backed by an estimated SGD 10 billion (USD 7.4 billion) in predominantly private sector capital.

    Rerouting Around Maritime Chokepoints

    Engineering plans for newly announced trans-Pacific and regional cables increasingly avoid traditional, direct passages through the South China Sea. Systems including Apricot, Echo, and Bifrost run alternative paths through Indonesian and Philippine territorial waters to connect Southeast Asia directly with North America, Japan, and South Korea. Taking longer perimeter paths increases capital costs and latency, but operators accept the trade-off to shield data links from geopolitical exposure and congested straits.

    For enterprise users and cloud operators across Asia-Pacific, these southern corridors remove single-point failure risks that have historically disrupted regional supply chains. Financial platforms, retail marketplaces, and cloud providers gain lower downtime risks during localized outages, while secondary telecom operators in Jakarta and Manila secure direct wholesale access without routing entirely through Singapore.

    Equipment Supply and Infrastructure Competition

    The supply chain for physical infrastructure remains divided among a handful of global manufacturers. Japan’s NEC and France’s ASN maintain strong market positions in island networks across Indonesia and the wider archipelago, while Chinese suppliers have expanded cable contracts in Cambodia and selected Indonesian domestic systems.

    This supplier spread gives regional governments room to balance national security requirements against procurement costs. At the same time, physical reliability remains a constant operational bottleneck. International Telecommunication Union data indicates that human activity, mainly commercial fishing and vessel anchoring, causes 86 per cent of all subsea cable faults, requiring more than 200 offshore repair operations worldwide each year.

    Coordinated Regional Master Plans

    The push for network redundancy builds on policy commitments laid out in the ASEAN Digital Master Plan 2030, which directs member countries to coordinate subsea repair approvals and landing permits. Previous repair timelines often stretched for months due to overlapping maritime jurisdictions and strict cabotage restrictions in archipelagic waters.

    Attention now turns to the planned commissioning of major multi-terabit links, including the Apricot and Bifrost systems, which are scheduled to land initial capacity phases before 2027.

  • AWS Plans 420 Tbps Sta’O’Nuk Subsea Cable Linking the US and Japan by 2029

    AWS Plans 420 Tbps Sta’O’Nuk Subsea Cable Linking the US and Japan by 2029

    Amazon Web Services will build a 420 Tbps subsea cable connecting the United States and Japan, scheduled to begin commercial operations in 2029.

    The system, named Sta’O’Nuk, will run 20 fiber pairs across the Pacific Ocean, linking a new landing station in Washington state to an undisclosed site in Japan. It represents the first international subsea cable to land in Washington state in nearly three decades.

    Landing station and tribal partnership

    AWS partnered with Toptana Technologies to develop the American cable landing station and backhaul network in Ocean Shores, Washington. Founded in 2022 by the Quinault Indian Nation, Toptana is the only Indigenous-owned cable landing station operator on the US West Coast.

    Construction has begun on the Ocean Shores facility, designed to support up to four subsea cable systems. Assured Communications serves as program manager and operational service provider for the station, while the Quinault Indian Nation granted AWS permission to use the name Sta’O’Nuk, which translates to “lightning serpent” in the Quinault language.

    Washington state last saw international subsea arrivals in 1999, when Pacific Crossing-1 landed at Harbour Pointe and Alaska United East connected in Lynnwood. Toptana previously outlined a 17,700-square-foot, 1 MW station footprint when it first announced site plans in 2022.

    Transpacific cloud capacity

    Hyperscale cloud providers have shifted from purchasing capacity on shared consortium routes to financing and constructing dedicated private pipes across Asia-Pacific corridors. Direct cable ownership provides AWS with lower latency, predictable operating costs, and dedicated bandwidth between its data center regions in North America and East Asia without reliance on third-party commercial carriers.

    The Japanese landing location and local terminal partners remain unannounced as construction advances toward the 2029 target.

  • Korea Eximbank Backs LS Cable Virginia Plant with 300 Billion Won

    Korea Eximbank Backs LS Cable Virginia Plant with 300 Billion Won

    The Export-Import Bank of Korea will provide 300 billion won ($217.7 million) in financing for LS Cable & System’s subsea cable factory in the United States.

    State backing covers nearly a third of the South Korean manufacturer’s total 1 trillion won ($725.6 million) investment to build the production site in Chesapeake, Virginia. The lender arranged the debt package to secure a foothold for Korean industrial suppliers in the North American energy transmission supply chain.

    Targeting AI Grids and Offshore Wind

    Construction in Chesapeake is scheduled for completion in the second half of 2027. Once fully operational, the plant will produce 500 kilometres of high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) subsea cables each year to link regional power grids across long distances with minimal transmission loss.

    The output will serve power grid operators in North America as well as offshore wind developers in Europe. Rising electricity consumption from hyperscale artificial intelligence data centers is accelerating utility spending on heavy-duty transmission lines that can carry bulk power across borders and coastal waters.

    South Korean Cable Makers Push Abroad

    South Korean manufacturers are building manufacturing capacity closer to Western grid projects as local transmission networks face backlogs. Rivals such as Taihan Cable are also expanding their subsea and offshore installation capabilities to capture orders outside East Asia.

    State lenders plan to issue additional credit lines to domestic cable producers competing for long-term supply contracts across North America and Europe. The Chesapeake plant remains on track to start commercial deliveries by late 2027.

  • Taihan Cable Teams with Robotics Firm to Build Subsea Installation ROVs

    Taihan Cable Teams with Robotics Firm to Build Subsea Installation ROVs

    Taihan Cable partnered with a specialized marine robotics firm to develop domestic remotely operated vehicles for underwater power network installations. The project aims to eliminate reliance on foreign equipment suppliers across offshore grid contracts.

    Developing dedicated subsea machinery in-house gives the South Korean manufacturer direct control over offshore laying schedules and operating costs. Specialized subsea trenching and burial vehicles remain critical bottlenecks in regional power grid deployments, where contractor shortages routinely delay cable commissioning.

    Cutting Dependence on Foreign Marine Tech

    The joint engineering effort focuses on building specialized subsea remotely operated vehicles capable of handling deepwater cable laying, seabed trenching, and cable protection tasks. Most Asian grid developers currently lease or purchase heavy marine robotics from a small group of European and North American specialists.

    Localizing this machinery allows the company to bid on turnkey offshore wind and interconnector jobs without exposing project timelines to overseas equipment availability. The company said the project will sharpen its construction competitiveness as it targets large-scale contracts in the global power infrastructure market.

    Offshore Power Grid Expansion

    Offshore wind expansion across East Asia has triggered a race among regional cable makers to secure dedicated installation vessels and underwater trenching tools. Rival Asian manufacturers have made similar investments to vertically integrate their offshore installation divisions.

    Commercial rollout timelines for the newly developed subsea vehicles and their initial deployment sites will determine how quickly the group can challenge established European installation contractors in regional waters.

  • Telstra to invest in two HK-US cables

    Telstra to invest in two HK-US cables

    Australia’s Telstra has announced plans to invest in two new subsea cable systems connecting Hong Kong to the west coast of the US.

    The company will invest in a half fiber pair on the Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable and the equivalent of 6TBps over the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN).

    The HKA cable is expected to be ready for service in 2020 and the PLCN to be complete in 2019.

    Once complete, the two cables will be able to act as more direct routes between the US and Asia than Telstra’s part-owned Asia-America Gateway (AAG) cable system, helping to reduce latency and meet increasing demand for connectivity between Greater China, ASEAN and the US.

    “As economic growth continues in China and South East Asia, so too does the demand for data. Together with the current AAG cable on which Telstra carries the most traffic today, these two investments will provide us with increased capacity across the important Hong Kong to US route, one of the fastest growing routes in the world for capacity demand,” Telstra group managing director of global services and international David Burns said.

    “Our investment in capacity on PLCN and HKA will also provide our customers with greater resiliency due to bypassing areas prone to natural disasters and offering two direct, alternative paths to the AAG cable which connects South East Asia to the US west coast via Hong Kong, Guam and Hawaii.”

    Meanwhile fellow Australian operator Vocus Communications has selected the ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) STT Tai Seng 1 data center to act as the point of presence in Singapore for its planned Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) subsea cable system.

    The 4,600km ASC will link Singapore with Perth in Western Australia via Indonesia. It is expected to be completed in the third quarter.

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