Fastest Asian submarine cable open for business

Asia’s fastest submarine cable link opened for business this week, carrying traffic at a blistering 40Gbps between Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines with an additional link to Hong Kong to be added in December.

The Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) is some 7,200km long and was constructed by NTT Com, Telekom Malaysia, Philippines-based PLDT and Singapore-based StarHub at a total cost in the region of $430m.

It’s been noted that the cable has a three millisecond latency gain on other cables running between Singapore and Tokyo, making it especially suited to high frequency financial trades, which depend on information getting from point A to point B in the fastest possible time.

Although the construction of the cable has taken the threat of natural disasters into account, the area around Japan and Taiwan is particularly susceptible to earthquakes and typhoons which have disrupted undersea cables in the past.