New Asian undersea cable ADC ready to operate, developer says

A new undersea fiber-optic cable connecting Japan to Singapore with branches to other Asian countries is ready for operation this month, one of the developers said on Thursday.

The Asia Direct Cable (ADC), which has been under development for years, was inaugurated on Wednesday at a ceremony in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, Vietnamese military-run telecom company Viettel said.

In addition to Viettel, the 10,000 km-long (6,210 miles) cable, has been developed by SoftBank, China Telecom Global, China Telecom Corporation, China Unicom , Singtel, TATA Communications, National Telecom and PLDT, Viettel Solutions – a unit of Viettel – said in a statement.

Japan’s NEC is the contractor of the project.

The cable will have branches to Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and the Philippines.

It will be Vietnam’s sixth undersea cable. The country plans to have 15 by 2030.

Last week, Reuters reported another project was being discussed between Vietnamese and Singaporean partners.

ADC will support increasingly bandwidth-intensive applications in the region, said Tomonori Uematsu, NEC’s senior vice president.