Asia Direct Cable Spotlight: Insights For Buyers

The eight fibre pair ADC system went live in November of last year. Its design capacity is slightly above 160 Tbps. Consortium members and large capacity owners include China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT (the Philippine incumbent), Singtel, Softbank, TATA, and Vietel. TATA owns a fibre pair marketed under its own brand, TGN-IA2. NEC built the Asia Direct Cable.

ADC 100G pricing for the Singapore to Tokyo route varies from $13.5K to $18.5K MRC on three year contracts. If you wish to avoid Chinese carriers, yet enjoy competitive pricing, TATA is a good choice. By a Chinese carrier I mean a network licensed to operate in mainland China and hence subject to its national security laws. These laws dictate that Chinese operators must cooperate with Chinese national security agencies. That's a big problem. In contrast, as just one example, Apple refused to cooperate with the FBI on unlocking a phone in an investigation. So there is a clear difference between China and the West.

Besides good pricing, ADC has surprisingly good latency. POP to POP the ASE system clocks a round trip delay of 63.5 ms. ASE is the fastest cable connecting Singapore and Japan and hence enjoys huge demand from financial trading firms. A good back up route to ASE is the corresponding ADC route at 65.4 ms. It's a measured latency so it should be accurate. However, I have also seen estimates a millisecond higher at 66.5 ms. Now ADC capacity owners can use their own back haul to Tokyo so POP-to-POP figures should be expected to vary. Physical diversity is extremely challenging for Singapore to Tokyo cables because both Singapore and Japan have far fewer cable landing stations than cables. ADC lands at Tuas, Singapore whereas ASE lands at the international airport. However, both land at the Maruyama complex. But there are at least three fibre routes back to Tokyo so backhaul diversity should be possible.

ADC's relatively low latency combined with competitive pricing makes it a good choice for trading firms looking for a well built and reliable backup path to ASE. The cable provides connectivity to the following list of countries: Japan, China, Philippines, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. The main trunk links Singapore with Japan. All other countries are served via branches off the main trunk.