Sustaining the demand for AI in Asia with investment in subsea cable infrastructure

Across the Asia Pacific region significant investment is going into new subsea cable infrastructure that will help sustain the long-term demand for AI.

We’ve written a lot on this blog about the impact of AI on networks and how AI workloads require low latency, high-capacity data transfer.

This in turn puts more pressure on existing network infrastructure and in particular subsea cable systems - which provide the global backbone for cloud platforms and data centres.

With many countries in Asia pursuing ambitious digital initiatives, there is a growing need to securely move data between key hubs in the region. According to TeleGeography, Asia is the region with the largest investment in subsea infrastructure over the past three years, with $1.2 billion invested in new intra-Asian routes.

Upgrades to existing subsea cable systems or deployment of new subsea cable infrastructure is crucial in order to:

• Keep up with global demand for bandwidth: New cables offer much higher capacity than legacy systems which means exponentially more data can be moved.
• Reduce latency: Which is important for real-time AI applications and financial trading.
• Facilitate cross border collaboration: Particularly in areas such as AI research and development.
• Better route diversity: New routes ensure greater resiliency and help avoid a single point of failure in the event of an outage.
• Reduce costs and improve energy efficiency: New systems offer more fibre pairs which brings down the overall unit cost of bandwidth, and also use lower-power amplifiers that result in lower power consumption per bit.

Here are some recent investments from PCCW Global in subsea cable infrastructure across Asia:

1.    ADC

The Asia Direct Cable (ADC) connects China, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The subsea cable system became operational in November 2024, and features multiple pairs of high-capacity optical fibres. It is designed to carry more than 160Tbps of traffic, enabling high-capacity transmission of data across East Asia and Southeast Asia.

ADC is part of PCCW Global's core network. If you are looking for new capacity or upgrades between Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, we are offering services between data centres within these locations, with the following estimated Round Trip Delay (RTD):

• Singapore – Hong Kong – 36ms
• Singapore – Japan – 64ms

2. SJC2:

Southeast Asia-Japan Cable 2 (SJC2) is a new intra-Asia cable connecting cable landing stations in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Taiwan, mainland China and Korea. Spanning 10,500km, the cable will offer greater levels of bandwidth and redundancy between key Asian digital hubs.

Capacity is available to pre-reserve on routes between Singapore and Japan, and Hong Kong and Singapore, which are due to go live in July 2025. A route between Hong Kong and Japan is due to go live in Q4 2025.

Services will be available from different data centre locations within these locations, with the following estimated RTD:

• Singapore - Japan: 65ms
• Hong Kong - Singapore: 35ms
• Hong Kong - Japan: 45ms

3.    AAE-2

PCCW Global, Sparkle, Telecom Egypt and ZOI have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on the construction of the Asia-Africa-Europe-2 (AAE-2), a next-generation subsea cable system that links Hong Kong and Singapore to Italy.

The cable system will offer a secure and high-capacity terrestrial corridor across Thailand, Arabian peninsula, and Egypt, delivering a diverse, resilient, and high-performance route for international traffic. By integrating both subsea and terrestrial infrastructure, AAE-2 will create a future-proof data highway between Asia, Africa and Europe.

This next-generation network underscores our continued commitment to delivering resilient, secure, and scalable connectivity for key markets such as Hong Kong, empowering the digital growth of tomorrow,” says Frederick Chui, CEO, PCCW Global.

Read the full press release here.

If you are interested in learning about how our network can support your bandwidth needs in Asia, contact sales@consoleconnect.com.