NEC Corporation has signed an agreement with a coalition of marque businesses to build a nearly 16,000-km-long optical submarine cable.

A press release said that NEC was selected by The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE) coalition composed of China Mobile International, Facebook and Amazon Web Services. Its mandate is to build a high- performance submarine cable connecting Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States. “NEC is honored to be selected by the BtoBE consortium as the turnkey system supplier for this world record-breaking optical fiber submarine cable system that covers the longest distance without regeneration,” it said.

The BtoBE system, scheduled for completion by the fourth quarter of 2020, will feature “multiple pairs of optical fibre that enable high-capacity transmission of data across the Pacific Ocean with round-trip latency of less than 130 milliseconds.” It added that the BtoBE “will further enhance and contribute to the much-needed expansion of communications networks between the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area and Singapore.”

The cable will be built with the most advanced optical submarine transmission equipment, thereby improving network redundancy, flexibility and ensuring highly reliable communications, the release said. The BtoBE, landing at three locations spanning across the Pacific Ocean, is designed so that once completed, it can carry at least 18Tbs of capacity per fiber pair, said Toru Kawauchi, general manager of the Submarine Network Division at NEC Corporation. “The BtoBE will provide seamless connectivity and network diversity ... and complement other Asia-Pacific submarine cables, among others.”

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