In anticipation of increased demand for subsea capacity driven by AI workloads in the Asia-Pacific, Australia-based Subco has announced three hypercable projects: APX North, APX-2 and APX West. All three projects are expected to be completed by 2029.
The subsea cable operator is currently finalizing the details of cable supply and vessels, with the Contract in Force (CIF) expected to be in place for all three systems by early next year. All three cable systems are designed with a 24-fiber pair configuration.
"I know it's ambitious, but it's achievable and it's necessary," said Subco founder and co-CEO Bevan Slattery in a statement.
He pointed out that people have been slow to understand that AI factories are dead without massive subsea connectivity to carry tokens from factory to customers.
"That's why we are about to undertake the single largest subsea infrastructure build ever by a carrier in the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the build itself huge, but the timeframe is compressed with over 40,000km of cable to be installed in just over three years," Slattery said.
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Project details
The 9,500 kilometer APX North cable will connect Sydney with Japan via Guam. According to Subco, this will be the first hypercable from Australia to Guam's interconnection hub and the first system to provide a direct connection between Japan and Australia.
Similar to the recently launched Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth (SMAP) cable, the APX North will have switched branching units, enabling selected fiber pairs to bypass Guam and establish a direct connection between Australia and Japan.
Meanwhile, the 10,000km APX East-2 cable will connect Australia and Japan to Los Angeles via Guam.
"This segment is vital and will serve as the backbone for trans-Pacific traffic between Asia and the US, as well as providing diverse connectivity for Australia and Japan via APX North. We expect this system to be incredibly popular," said Slattery.
APX East-1, which was announced in January of this year, will also provide an alternative route to the US by establishing a deep-water link between Sydney and San Diego. The system is expected to be operational by Q4 2028, with extensions to Hawaii and Fiji due to be completed the following year.
The 4,600km APX West cable will connect Perth to Singapore, with branches extending to Jakarta and Batam in Indonesia. According to Subco, the system is designed to provide additional resilience and flexibility by enabling switching in and out of new regional interconnection hubs in Batam and Jakarta.
Related:$44M subsea cable secures Taiwan-Matsu digital lifeline "Singapore and Indonesia remain critical to Asia's connectivity landscape, and their strategic importance will only grow as bandwidth demand accelerates, and new interconnection hubs are needed to deliver greater flexibility and route diversity," Slattery said.
"We are building as much of that as possible into our system design and making that available to our cornerstone customers through APX West," he added.
FLAG upgrades Echo cable
Relatedly, FLAG, a privately owned subsea cable network, announced plans to upgrade its dedicated fiber pair of the Echo submarine cable system, which will introduce new 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 800GbE services between Asia and North America.
Last December, FLAG acquired capacity from Google's forthcoming Echo submarine system, thereby adding a new trans-Pacific route to its global network.
The private subsea cable firm will deploy Ciena's Waveserver platform, equipped with WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) 1.6 Tbit/s coherent optics, along an RLS line system on its more than 16,000km dedicated fiber pair of the Echo subsea cable system.
Flag said the upgrade "will maximize the performance of one of a limited number of direct cable routes between Singapore and the United States."
"Our investment in Echo enables us to transport rapidly growing volumes of AI, cloud, and enterprise traffic across one of the world's most important digital corridors," said Brad Kneller, chief network officer, FLAG. "Using Ciena's leading coherent optical technology, we can rapidly bring new 400GbE and 800GbE services to market while delivering the scale, resiliency, and performance our customers require as AI and cloud traffic continue to accelerate."
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Construction of Candle cable system
Meanwhile, telecom operator XLSmart confirmed that construction of the Candle cable system is underway with the deployment of a golden buoy at Tanjung Bemban, Batam, which is the designated landing point of the Indonesian segment of the 8,000km subsea cable system.
The Indonesian telecom operator is one of the consortium members funding the Candle cable system, alongside Meta, Globe Telecom, IPS Telekom Malaysia and SoftBank Japan.
The new cable system, announced last September, will connect Japan and Singapore, with additional links to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.
XLSmart said it is collaborating with its consortium partners to obtain regulatory approval and permits from the six countries whose territorial waters the cable will pass through.
The Candle cable system is expected to be operational in 2028.