Asia’s seabed is a hotbed of cable-laying activity

• Ever-increasing data and video traffic volumes are driving demand for more subsea network capacity
• New submarine cables are being deployed around the world
• Multiple new projects are underway or nearing completion across the Asia Pacific region

After its initial boom and bust at the turn of the 21st century, the global submarine cable-laying industry has settled down to a less irrationally exuberant period of steady growth and much of the activity driving the market is happening in Asia Pacific waters. 

There are currently more than 530 submarine communications cables in service across the world and another 77 in the planning stage, taking the total to more than 600, according to Telegeography. And that number continues to grow as more and more data and video traffic traverses the world, fuelled by the ever-increasing number of connected people and devices, ongoing datacentre construction and the data traffic volume surge being generated by the development and use of AI applications. 

That traffic is highly dependent on subsea networks: According to Grand View Research, around 97% of worldwide internet traffic is dependent on submarine cables. 

To cope with demand, more submarine cables are being built around the world. Among the recent announcements of new network construction in the Asia Pacific region is one from  the Bangladesh Private Cable System (BPCS) consortium, which says it’s starting work on the country’s first privately owned subsea cable linking Bangladesh to the UMO subsea cable, which runs from Thanlyin, Myanmar to Tuas, Singapore.

Meanwhile the South-east Asia Hainan-Hong Kong Express (SEA-H2X) subsea backbone linking Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines (La Union) and Singapore has finally reached its landing point in the Philippines, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin) and BW Digital announced a partnership to develop and construct the Nongsa-Changi submarine cable system linking Batam and Singapore, and there many more projects currently on the drawing board or already underway.

So much for the instinctive idea that major bodies of water represent a communications barrier. In reality the opposite has often proved to be true, with seas and oceans enabling, rather than inhibiting, trade and contact between otherwise isolated populations. So much so that where the available navigable water was inadequate, people built harbours, dredged rivers and dug canals. “Whatever floats your boat,” could have been their motto.

As trade routes girdled the globe, however, it became clear that speedy communications to run alongside them were urgently required. Fast, centrally organised mail ships (so-called packets) filled that role at first, but what was really needed was instant – rather than multi-week – messaging to fine-tune global commerce and keep political and military leadership, as well as the scattered populace, in near real-time touch. In telecom terms, a  high-speed signalling channel was required.

To meet that need, the first submarine telegraph cables splashed down in Europe and across the Atlantic to pipe instant messages back and forth in the 1850s: And the rest, as they say, is telecom history.

A mere 170 years later, a vast undersea network is in place, growing strongly and supporting an ever-expanding volume of data and range of applications and that, in turn, is fuelling growth in the global submarine cable manufacturing and marine laying and maintenance sector, which was worth $27.57bn in 2022 and is set to grow to be worth $44.3bn per year by 2030, according to Grand View Research. 

And it’s not just demand for communications cables that’s driving the growth as the sector is being juiced by a surge in submarine power cable laying, thanks mostly to the need for  cables to land electricity generated by off-shore wind and national grid connectivity projects.

The Asia Pacific region is well placed to develop its submarine cable industry beyond 2030. For a start, island communities are one of the many things that Asia has in abundance and a significant proportion of its vast population (estimated to be 4.9 billion this year [https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/asia] ) is island based and, either now or in the future, will need many more undersea cable connections. Indonesia alone has more than 17,000 islands, while the Philippines sports at least 7,500.

Asia Pacific also has vast land masses that are best traversed by skirting subsea cable around their edges rather than driving them through inhospitable terrain: Australia’s SMAP (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth) subsea cable is the premier case in point: This one runs for 5,000 kilometres and links Australia’s major conurbations – see TeleGeography Submarine Cable Map.

The submarine cable has proven its power by sustaining one Asian island – Singapore – as a major regional data hub. Far from being communications-isolated, Singapore currently accommodates 17 active cable landings which, in turn, help feed its large datacentre industry.

In summary, having water lapping in and around your settlements is a communications boon. Consider the world’s ocean-rich commercial hotspots: There’s the Mediterranean Sea;  The Baltic Sea, linking Germany, Sweden, Finland and Russia; the North Sea, connecting The UK, Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium and France; plus all the transatlantic fibre connecting the prosperous and well-connected US north-eastern states and Canada, via the Great Lakes.

With that in mind, pull up a globe or open a world map and it becomes clear that the biggest cable-laying, water-soaked region of all, now and in future, has to be Asia.

– Ian Scales, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV