Asia Direct Cable consortium begin new submarine cable construction

Asia Direct Cable (ADC) consortium has started building a submarine cable connecting China (Hong Kong SAR and Guangdong Province), Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The consortium has selected NEC Corporation to construct the 9,400-kilometre long ADC cable, which is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2022.

The cable will feature multiple pairs of high capacity optical fibres and is designed to carry more than 140 Tbps of traffic, enabling high capacity transmission of data across the East and Southeast Asian regions.

ADC’s capacity allows it to support increasingly bandwidth-intensive applications driven by technological advancements in 5G, Cloud Platforms, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence.

Carl Osborne, associate vice president, International Cable Network Development, Tata Communications, who is the member of the consortium, said: “At Tata Communications, we’ve been delivering flexible borderless connectivity together with intelligent application aware networks to our global customers. Our collaboration within ADC consortium to build this high-performance submarine cable will provide enterprises with additional connectivity between major traffic hubs in Asia. This will further augment our existing capabilities on the Tata Communications Global Network with deeper reach, enabling us to offer superior customer experience and enhanced resilience. With digital technologies steering the growth of business more than ever before, this additional capability will address the increasing bandwidth and data demands of enterprises in Asia and globally.”