Red Hot Chili Packets! New submarine cable to land in home of cult Sriracha sauce

A consortium of big name Asian tech companies have unveiled plans to build a new submarine cable across seven countries in the region.

The 9,400km long cable will carry 140Tbps of traffic and land at seven stations, including Japan, China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, the Philippines, and in Si Racha (ศรีราชา), Thailand, home and namesake of the popular Sriracha hot sauce. Construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

The Asia Direct Consortium (ADC) is made up of SoftBank, Tata Communications, China Telecom, China Unicom, Singtel, Philippine telco PLDT, Vietnamese telco Viettel, and Thai telco CAT.

The consortium awarded NEC with the contract to build the cable for an undisclosed sum. NEC is currently building the 10,500km-long Southeast Asian Japan 2 cable, which will provide 144Tbps to 11 locations across East and Southeast Asia. The project is expected to be completed at the end of next year after delays this year.

"The ADC system provides the highest cable capacity and necessary diversity for Asia's key information hubs, which will enable carriers and service providers to better plan their networks for a sustainable development," said Chang Weiguo, ADC co-chair and director of planning product development at China Telecom.

"This new system will contribute to drive the Asian ICT business growth as one of the core infrastructures in the region and to meet the evolving marketplace," said ADC co-chair and GM of SoftBank, Koji Ishii.

"NEC continues to support critical infrastructure in Asia. This advanced optical fiber submarine cable system will provide seamless connectivity to the countries it lands in and the regions it services," said Atsushi Kuwahara, GM of NEC's submarine network division. ®