Facebook, Google Plan New Undersea Cables to Connect Singapore, Indonesia, and North America
Facebook said on Monday it planned two new undersea cables to connect Singapore, Indonesia, and North America during a project with Google and regional telecommunication companies to boost up Internet connection capacity between the regions.
“Named Echo and Bifrost, those 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 per cent,” Facebook vice chairman of Network Investments, Kevin Salvadori, told Reuters.
According to the executive, The cables are going to be the primary to directly connect North America to some of the main parts of Indonesia and can increase connectivity for the central and eastern provinces of the world’s fourth most populous state.
Salvadori said Echo is being an inbuilt partnership with Alphabet’s Google and Indonesian telecommunications’ company XL Axiata and will be completed by 2023.
Bifrost, which is being wiped out in partnership with Telin, a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Telkomsel, and Singaporean conglomerate Keppel is thanks to being completed by 2024.
The two cables, which need regulatory approval, follow previous investments by Facebook to create connectivity in Indonesia, one among its top five markets globally.
While 73 per cent of Indonesia’s population of 270 million are online, the bulk access the web through mobile data, with less than 10 per cent using a broadband connection, consistent with a 2020 survey by the Indonesian Internet Providers Association.
Swathes of the country, remain with no Internet access.
Facebook said last year it might deploy 3about 2000 miles of metro fibre in Indonesia across twenty cities additionally to a previous deal to develop public Wi-Fi hotspots.
