Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) has signed an agreement to participate in a multilateral project to lay an undersea cable connecting several countries in Asia in a bid to increase its international presence, the company announced yesterday.
The 12,000km-long Apricot subsea cable system that is to feature state-of-the-art transmission technology would connect Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Guam, the company said.
Scheduled to be launched in 2024, the Apricot cable system would have a capacity of more than 190 terabits per second to meet growing demand for access to 5G mobile broadband networks, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cloud services and videoconferencing.
Photo courtesy of Chunghwa Telecom Co
The high-capacity undersea cable would bring high-speed, reliable Internet to Taiwan as it enters the 5G era, and is expected to lay the cornerstone for advancing Chunghwa Telecom’s cross-border telecom cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and enhance Taiwan’s status in the region.
To improve Taiwan’s global Internet security, Chunghwa Telecom has been bolstering its links with neighboring countries and important telecom markets in the region by participating in several international undersea cable projects.
It has invested in the construction of the Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) and the New Cross Pacific submarine cable networks, which are both landed at Yilan County’s Toucheng Township (頭城).
It is also participating in the construction of the Southeast Asia-Japan 2 (SJC2) undersea cable from New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) and Pingtung County’s Fangshan Township (枋山) to enhance Taiwan’s national network security. The SJC2 cable is expected to be completed next year.
The Apricot cable features a new router that could link with the APG and SJC2 cables through routers in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Thailand, and form a more comprehensive international undersea network in Southeast Asia, said Wu Hsueh-lan (吳學蘭), president of Chunghwa Telecom’s international business group.
Alphabet Inc’s Google and Facebook Inc yesterday announced their participation in the construction of the Apricot subsea cable, which is set to enhance the flexibility of their digital services and improve Internet connectivity across the Asia-Pacific region.
Apricot is Google’s latest investment in the global submarine cable area. The company has invested in 18 undersea cables, 27 cloud regions and 82 cloud zones.
Facebook in March announced two new trans-Pacific subsea cables connecting Singapore to the US west coast — Bifrost and Echo — with Google participating in the latter.
Google said in a blog post that the Echo and Apricot cables are complementary submarine systems, and would improve the resilience of Google Cloud and the company’s other digital services.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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