The telecom consortium behind the Southeast Asia Japan Cable (SJC) have switched on the $400 million system.
The 8,900km SJC cable system links up Brunei, mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the Philippines.
SingTel VP and SJC consortium spokesperson Ooi Seng Keat said the cable route has been designed to avoid the North Asia earthquake zone, potentially improving network resilience in the SEA region.
The cable has an initial design capacity of 28Tbps through six fiber pairs, and is interconnected with a transpacific cable running between Singapore and Los Angeles.
The SJC consortium consists of China Mobile International, China Telecom, Chunghwa subsidiary Donghwa, the Philippines' Globe, Google, Japan's KDDI, Indonesia's PT Telkom, Brunei International Gateway and Thailand's TOT.
The latter partner allows SJC the option to extend a link to Thailand in the future, which would increase the length of the cable system to 9,700km.
The SJC was built and deployed by NEC and TE SubCom. Construction commenced in April 2011.