New undersea cables to connect Southeast Asia and America: A combined mission of Facebook and Google.
Hisana Thasneem
Googleplex Headquarters | credits: Wikipedia
On Monday, Facebook announced that it is planned, two new undersea cables in a collaboration with Google to connect North America, Singapore and Indonesia to boost internet connection capacity between the regions. These are done with the help of regional telecommunication companies which sought help to maintain a stability to the projects.
Kevin Salvadori, Facebook Vice President of Network Investments mentioned that Echo and Bifrost, the name given to these two projects will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-pacific by about 70%. Even though he declined to specify the size of the investment, but mentioned that it will be a very material investment for Facebook in Southeast Asia.
The cables are intended to increase connectivity for the world's fourth most populous country including central and eastern provinces. This project will be the first to directly connect North America to some of the main parts of Indonesia. Echo is being built in partnership with Alphabet’s Google and Indonesian telecommunications’ company XL Axiata and should be completed by 2023.
Bifrost, which is being done in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Telkom, and Singaporean conglomerate Keppel is due to be completed by 2024.
According to a 2020 survey by the Indonesian Internet Providers Association out of 73% of Indonesia’s population, 270 million people are found to be online, only less than 10 percent people are using a broadband connection to access internet, majority of them access the web through mobile data.
Indonesia had a great developments in field of broadband connectivity last year as Facebook planned of deploying 3,000 km of fibre in Indonesia across twenty cities. This was done in addition to the previous deal to develop public Wi-Fi hotspots. Apart from the Southeast Asian cables, Facebook was continuing with its broader subsea plans in Asia and globally, including with the Pacific Light Cable Network.
We are working with partners and regulators to meet all of the concerns that people have, and we look forward to that cable being a valuable, productive transpacific cable going forward in the near future.-Salvadori