Meta to boost APAC connectivity with subsea cable

Meta is expanding its investment in Asia-Pacific’s digital infrastructure with an 8,000km subsea cable that will connect Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

When ready by 2028, the subsea cable, dubbed Candle, is expected to bolster internet connectivity for over 580 million people with a 570 terabits per second (Tbps) of capacity.

The move comes as the Asia-Pacific region now accounts for over 58% of the world’s internet users who increasingly rely on digital infrastructure for everything from online services to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

In collaboration with telecoms firms in the region, Candle will use the recently developed 24 fibre-pair technology to deliver bandwidth similar to Meta’s largest capacity cable today, Anjana. The new project is part of Meta’s broader efforts to enhance global connectivity, including the ambitious Project Waterworth, a global cable system spanning five continents, including Asia, by the end of the decade.  

Alongside the new cable, Meta also announced the completion of its 15,000km Bifrost subsea cable that connects Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Guam and the west coast of North America through the Java Sea and Celebes Sea.

With a future connection to Mexico planned for 2026, Bifrost provides more than 260 Tbps of capacity along a diverse route across the Pacific. It was built together with Singaporean conglomerate Keppel and Telin, an Indonesian datacentre and carrier services provider.

Meta also provided updates on two other subsea projects, Echo and Apricot. The Echo cable now connects Guam and California with 260 Tbps of capacity, with options for future onward connections to Asia while the Apricot cable is now operational between Japan, Taiwan, and Guam, and will eventually extend to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore, adding a further 290 Tbps of capacity.

Besides Meta, Google has also been investing in subsea cables. These include the Indigo cable system, a consortium project connecting Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia, which went live in 2019, as well as the Pacific Connect initiative to improve connectivity between the US, Japan, and several Pacific Island nations.

In Australia, Fibre Expressway led the $1.5bn Koete datacentre and connectivity project to link Perth and Darwin to the rest of the Asia-Pacific region. It comprises three tier-four datacentres paired to a 10,000-kilometre, carrier-neutral, high-speed low-latency subsea cable with 16 fibre pairs.

Subsea cable networks are critical for the performance of cloud computing services, AI and the digital experiences of billions of users. According to a study by Analysys Mason, Google’s network infrastructure investments in Asia-Pacific between 2010 and 2019 were linked to an additional $430bn in aggregate GDP and 1.1 million jobs in the region.