The partners in the South East Asia Hainan – Hong Kong Express Cable System (SEA-H2X) cable project have reaffirmed their partnership to construct and operate the system and say that it is targeted to be ready for service in 2024.
China Mobile International Limited, China Unicom Global, Converge Information and Communications Technology Solutions and PPTEL SEA H2X are partnering to construct and operate SEA-H2X, a new submarine cable system that will connect Hong Kong SAR China, Hainan China, the Philippines, Thailand, East Malaysia and Singapore, with options to extend to Vietnam, Cambodia, West Malaysia and Indonesia.
They have appointed HMN Technologies, a provider of turnkey submarine network solutions, to undertake the design, manufacturing and deployment of the system in a fully funded project that, the partners say, will greatly enhance intra-Asian connectivity.
Employing an open system model, SEA-H2X has the flexibility to choose best-of-breed submarine line terminal equipment from third-party vendors at a later date. HMN Tech’s advanced branching unit (BU) and reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexer (ROADM) will benefit SEA-H2X by providing the flexibility of electrical power and optical fibre switches across multiple locations.
At approximately 5,000 kilometres in length, the SEA-H2X cable will consist of at least eight fibre pairs between Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, with a design capacity of 160 terabits per second to meet the growing bandwidth requirement in the region.
