A consortium of operators and internet companies have announced plans to build a high-capacity subsea cable linking Japan, the Philippines and the US.
The JUPITER cable system will span 14,000km between the three markets. It will use 400Gbps WDM technology to deliver an initial design capacity of 60Tbps, making it the fastest cable between Japan and the US.
The cable is being constructed by a consortium comprising Japan's NTT Group and SoftBank, the Philippines' PLDT, PCCW Global – the international arm of Hong Kong's HKT, Amazon and Facebook.
It will link up with NTT Com's part-owned Asia Submarine cable Express (ASE), Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) and Pacific Crossing 1 (PC-1) subsea cables to provide a redundant three-route structure linking major cities in Asia and the US.
JUPITER will use cutting edge submersible ROADM (reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer) and WSS (wavelength selective switch) technologies for a gridless, flexible bandwidth configuration. The cable is expected to launch in early 2020.
PLDT will invest nearly 7 billion pesos ($135.5 million) in the JUPITER project, according to the company's CEO Manuel V Pangilinan.
“We are investing in this new cable system in anticipation of the continued explosion of data traffic over the next few years, as households and businesses in the Philippines adopt more and more digital services,” he said.
“Along with our other technology initiatives, this new project will enable PLDT to gear up for the emerging ‘Gigabit Society’ where ultra-high-speed connectivity will support a wide range of bandwidth-heavy, low-latency digital applications and IoT services.”
The cable will use PLDT's landing station in Camarines Norte in the Philippines and SoftBank's landing station in Maruyama in Japan alongside landing stations in Shima Japan and California in the US.