The SJC2 consortium and NEC announced on Friday that the Southeast Asia–Japan 2 (SJC2) subsea cable is now live, officially adding more than 126 Tbps of capacity to the Asia-Pacific region.
SJC2’s main trunk connects Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, with additional landing points in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Taiwan, mainland China and South Korea. The 10,500-km subsea cable system is designed with seven fibre-optic pairs with 18 Tbps of capacity per pair.
Meng Fai Yue, senior director of Singtel and Herbert Xiong, head of submarine cables infrastructure, China Mobile International CMI) – who are also co-chairs of the SJC2 Consortium Management Committee – said in a joint statement that the SJC2 system “will boost connectivity in the Asia-Pacific region, delivering unparalleled bandwidth capacity and ultra-low latency to power the next-generation of cloud computing, AI-driven services and real-time data exchange across Asia's leading economies.”
Apart from Singtel and CMI, the SJC2 consortium also comprises Chunghwa Telecom, Donghwa Telecom, KDDI, Meta, SK Broadband, Telin, True Internet Corp and VNPT International.
The activation of SJC2 – which was constructed by NEC and has been in the works since 2018 – comes two days after NEC won a contract to build a new subsea system along the same route, albeit with some different landing points.
The Asia United Gateway East (AUG East) system will span 8,900 km and link Singapore and Japan with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan. The system is targeted for completion by the third quarter of 2029.
AUG East is backed by a consortium comprising Singtel, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Arteria Networks, Chunghwa Telecom, Dreamline, Globe Telecom, Telekom Malaysia and Unified National Networks.
