Asia - Submarine Networks

Cable Landing Stations in China

There are now the following submarine cables landing in Mainland China:

Cables to the US:

China-US CN (retired)
TPE
NCP

Cables connecting Asia：

Cables to Africa and Europe：

FLAG Europe-Asia
SMW3

The cables land at 9 submarine cable landing stations in China.

China Telecom owns three cable landing stations, including

Chongming Cable Landing Station for APCN-2, APG, China-US CN (retired), SWM3, TPE and NPC.
Shantou Cable Landing Station for APCN-2, China-US CN, SMW3 and SJC.
Xiamen Cable Landing Station for the undergoing Xiamen-Jinmen cable connecting Jinmen Island of Taiwan and Mainland China

China Unicom owns four cable landing stations, including:

Qingdao Cable Landing Station for the TPE and the EAC network;
Cable landing stations in Nanhui, one for FLAG and the other for C2C, APG and NCP, and
Changle Cable Landing Station in Fujian province for the undergoing TSE-1 connecting directly Taiwan Island and Mainland China.

China Mobile owns two cable landing stations:

Lingang Cable Landing Station for NCP and SJC2;
Wenchang Cable Landing Station for Hainan to Hong Kong Express (H2HE)

Cable Landing Stations in Taiwan

There are now 15 submarine cables landing in 7 cable landing stations in Taiwan:

Global internet giants and operators have heavy investments in Taiwan.

Google has two hyperscale data centers in Taiwan, one in Changhua County which costs US$780 million and was completed in 2013, the other in Tainan Technology Industrial Park which will cost US$850 million, with a power supply of 10MW. So, Google builds two subsea cable connecting Taiwan and the US, FASTER and PLCN. Google also acquies huge capacity on other subsea cables connectign Taiwan.

Facebook has significant investment on subsea cables connecting Taiwan, including APG, SJC2 and HKA. Especially, Facebook owns 4 out of the six fiber pairs on HKA Toucheng/Taiwan Branch.

Besides local operators including Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone Telecom (NCIC), etc., Telstra represents a key player on submarine cable business in Taiwan, its EAC-C2C network landing in 4 cable landing stations in Taiwan, and being HKA landing party in Taiwan.

Geographically, the east and south coast of Taiwan island is of significant importance for the submarine networks, and is also a high-risk region for the submarine networks due to the characteristics of the geology of Taiwan.

The east and south of Taiwan are a complex system of belts formed by, and part of the zone of, active collision between the North Luzon Through portion of the Luzon Volcanic Arc and South China, where accreted portions of the Luzon Arc and Luzon forearc form the eastern Coastal Range and parallel inland Longitudinal Valley of Taiwan respectively. This region is encountered frequent seismic faults which may caused serious harmful impact to the submarine networks. For example, the magnitude 7.0 Hengchun Earthquake in December 2006 resulted in 18 cable cuts in 8 submarine cable systems, atastrophically disrupted Internet services in Asia and Pan-Pacific regions.

Cable Landing Stations in Indonesia

Cable Landing Stations in Brunei Darussalam

Brunei Darussalam is shaping up as a bandwidth transit hub for the Bornean States of Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan. Terrestrial fibre optic cables connect these Bornean States to Brunei cable landing stations which then provide direct connectivity to 9 international destinations, namely Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Japan, China and USA.

The Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry (AITI) facilitates the deployment of telecommunication infrastructure and services, including submarine cables, in Brunei. An Infrastructure Provider for the Telecommunication Industry (InTi) is required to deploy a submarine cable system into Brunei.

As of January 2020, Brunei Darussalam is connected to 4 active submarine cable systems, with a potential bandwidth capacity of 10 Tbps. These 4 submarine cable systems are landed in two cable landing sites in Brunei, namely the Tungku landing site and the Telisai landing site.

There are currently two cable landing stations:

Tungku Submarine Cable Station
Telisai Submarine Cable Station

Cable Landing Stations in Brunei Darussalam, Source: UNN

There are now four submarine cables connecting Brunei:

AAG - Asia America Gateway cable
SJC - South East Asia Japan Cable
SMW3 - South East Asia Middle-East West Europe 3 cable
LBC - Labuan Brunei Cable.

Riding on the strong growth in IP-based traffic, Brunei has successfully lighted up 10 Tbps of international capacity to fuel bandwidth demand.

Brunei’s geographical location with no history of natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes, and substantially lower power costs, presented the sultanate with added advantages as a connectivity and transit hub for the underserved regions of Borneo Island and the BIMP-EAGA (Brunei Indonesia Malaysia Philippines East Asia Growth Area)

Brunei is connected Sabah and Sarawak of Malaysia and the West Kalimantan Province of Indonesia with terrestrial connectivity via the border crossing of Sungai Tujoh, and with commercial traffic of 1 Tbps.

Contributed by: Marcus Ang, et al., UNN