Submarine Cable Boom: $8 Billion in New Asia-Pacific Cables Announced
Submarine Cables Ride the AI Wave
Eight new submarine cable projects with a combined investment of approximately $8 billion have been announced for the Asia-Pacific region in the past six months. The surge is driven by explosive data demand from AI training and inference workloads, as well as data sovereignty regulations that require data to remain within national borders.
Google, Meta, and Microsoft are behind the largest projects. Google's Proa cable will connect Japan, Guam, and Australia with a capacity of 300 terabits per second. Meta's Hawaiki Nui-2 will link New Zealand, Australia, and the US West Coast. Microsoft is investing in a new cable from Singapore to Japan via Taiwan.
AI Data Centers Drive Demand
The AI training boom has created unprecedented demand for data center capacity in Asia, which in turn requires more international bandwidth. Japan and Singapore have emerged as the region's primary AI data center hubs, with Tokyo's data center capacity growing 35% in 2025 alone.
Alan Mauldin, research director at TeleGeography, said "every major cloud and AI company is simultaneously building data centers in Asia and the submarine cables to feed them. The two investments are inseparable."
Data Sovereignty Factor
New data localization laws in Vietnam, Indonesia, and India are forcing companies to build regional data infrastructure rather than routing traffic through existing hubs. Vietnam's Decree 13 requires all data about Vietnamese citizens to be stored domestically, driving investment in cables that connect directly to Vietnam rather than routing through Singapore or Hong Kong.
Indonesia's recently enacted data protection law has similar requirements. The country is now served by three new cable landings, up from one major landing point previously. Telkom Indonesia is investing $400 million in the Bifrost cable connecting Indonesia to the US West Coast via Singapore.
Supply Chain Bottlenecks
The wave of new projects has strained the submarine cable manufacturing supply chain. Only four companies — SubCom (US), Alcatel Submarine Networks (France), NEC (Japan), and HMN Technologies (China) — can manufacture modern submarine cables. Lead times have extended from 18 months to over 30 months.
SubCom CEO David Coughlan said the company's order book "extends to 2030. We're investing in additional manufacturing capacity at our Newington, New Hampshire facility, but the industry needs multiple years to scale production to meet current demand."
