English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) NTT Ltd. announced on Monday that it is forming a cable consortium with four other parties. The consortium will lead the construction and maintenance of the APRICOT large-capacity unique-routed optical submarine cable within Asian countries and the U.S..
The Apricot consortium comprises NTT, Chunghwa Telecom, PLDT, Facebook and Google.
The APRICOT cable system will be 12,000km long, with a capacity of more than 190Tbps. It will connect Japan to Singapore, with branches to Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and the United States.
NTT will be responsible for operating and managing the following sites for APRICOT system: Minamiboso landing station in Chiba Prefecture in Japan, landing station in Indonesia, and lastly Tuas landing station in Singapore.
NTT’s Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE), Asia Pacific Gateway (APG), Pacific Crossing-1 (PC-1), JUPITER and MIST cables will connect with APRICOT to provide diverse routes and linking major cities in Asia, Japan and United States, with a secure and reliable international network.
In addition, NTT Ltd. Group companies will connect the data centers in Japan, Singapore and Indonesia to enlarge the transmission capacity connectivity among those countries.
APRICOT will feature state-of-the-art submersible ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) employing WSS (wavelength selective switch) for a grid-less and flexible bandwidth configuration, based on SDM (Space Division Multiplexing) design.
APRICOT is expected to launch in 2024 with initial design capacity of more than 190Tbps, to meet rising data demands and complement existing cable systems.
