Telecom operators in Asia have formed the Apricot consortium with Google to deploy a new submarine cable connecting Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, and Guam. The joint build agreement covers a 12,000-km cable with the latest optical transmission technology and new routing, with capacity of more than 190 Tbps. They expect to complete the project in 2024.
NTT said the system will connect Japan to Singapore, with branches to Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan and the US. NTT will be responsible for operating and managing the Minamiboso landing station in Chiba Prefecture in Japan, a landing station in Indonesia, and the Tuas landing station in Singapore, as well as onward connections to local data centres.
Chunghwa Telecom also announced its participation in the project, saying Apricot's special route will supplement the APG and SJC2 which land in Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand. Together the cables form a complete ring among Taiwan and Southeast Asia countries, offering redundancy and diverse routings in the Pacific and Southeast Asia region.
Philippines operator PLDT said it will also participate in the project, taking it a total 14 undersea cable projects. The company said it will invest around USD 80 million in Apricot.
The system will feature 400G transmission technology. With a submersible reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM), the Apricot system will employ wavelength selective switch (WSS) techniques for a gridless and flexible bandwidth configuration based on space division multiplexing design.
