SEA-H2X: The Mystery Player Among Southeast Asian Subsea Cables

SEA-H2X: A Mystery Player Among Subsea Cables

This cable is very under the radar. Very few industry insiders ever mention it. Yet, it is not an insignificant project. The main 8 fibre pair trunk directly connects Singapore and Hong Kong. It uses branching units to extend the cable to Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, and a free trade Chinese port city known as Hainan. Hauwei Marine built it with advanced branching units that include optical switching as well as flexible power distribution. The cable's design capacity is 180 Tbps. At 20 Tbps a pair, I suspect there is upside throughput potential. 

Interestingly enough, it is an open cable system so each consortium member selects and buys their own submarine line termination gear which I assume includes the DWDM kit. This helps to some extent alleviate the concern that Chinese security agencies have compromised the system. But there are other ways of eavesdropping other than infiltrating the terminal gear even though that is the best way to spy. 

Interestingly enough, Singtel is not a consortium member. The Chinese 'duo' of China Mobile and China Unicom lead the project. It is also interesting that this pair is almost inseparable on subsea projects. My guess is China Telecom regards them as competitors and thereby limits cooperation with them. Converge, a competitive Philippine carrier doing a big fibre deployment across the islands, is a consortium member. Finally, there is also a Malaysian company whose identity is not particularly clear. It is known as PPTEL SEA H2X Sdn. Bhd and the Chinese twins may be the owners. 

Cable is RFS 2025. SEA-H2X is really about Chinese economic interests and international trade. Most end users will be Chinese companies. There are also significant ethnic Chinese populations in many of the participating countries. Finally, Unicom and Mobile need capacity for their own Internet backbones.




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