Asia's fastest undersea data cable to link to Hong Kong next year

Asia's fastest undersea data cable has gone into service to help the region keep pace with rising internet traffic, the needs of financial markets and the growing reliance on "cloud" computing.

The 7,800-kilometre Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) is capable of transferring 40 gigabits of data a second - allowing, for example, a computer user to download an entire DVD in two seconds. And it has been designed to expand capacity further to be able to transmit at 100 gigabits per second.

"Internet traffic is booming. More and more people are using smartphones with 3G or even 4G networks which require faster broadband," said Junta Nakanishi, head of network engineering at NTT Com Asia, one of the four companies involved. "Considering that YouTube is now supporting 3D videos, in five years our current cable system may become outdated."

The other firms involved in the project are PLDT, the Philippines' biggest telecommunications firm, StarHub, Singapore's second-largest telco, and Telekom Malaysia.

Internet traffic can be slowed by the number of "hops" traffic has to make as it traverses different stretches of cable, and as it passes through different landing stations. The route for the new cable has been made as straight as possible to reduce the time it takes to get information from one end to the other to 65 milliseconds.

Not only is its capacity higher, a technology called wavelength division multiplexing enables signals to squeeze into fibres that are thinner and lighter than in older fibre optic cables.