The Japanese Strike Again: The New Intra-Asian Marine Cable (IAMC)

NTT and Mitsui Leasing have teamed up together with fibre optic cable manufacturer Sumitomo Corporation to fund a 16 fibre pair subsea cable costing $500 million. Design capacity is 320 Tbps. This is the second project on which NTT Data And Mitsui Leasing have cooperated. The very high capacity Juno cable was the first project. It is unusual to see a large incumbent player like NTT doing a subsea cable project with a non-telecom company. But the advantages are clear. Mitsui will contribute cash, but not play a major role in design or wholesale commercials. So Mitsui not only reduces NTT's risk by sharing funding requirements, but it gives NTT a free hand in decision making.


One lesson that has become perfectly clear is that large carrier consortiums increase the likelihood of deployment delays because decisions require consensus. Moreover, the consensus requirement leads to frequent vetos on new ideas among the ultra-cautious member representatives. Imagine the challenge of getting 5 to 15 representatives to agree on equipment vendors, network design, and commercial matters. I am sure META wanted to use copper as the power material for 2Africa, but had to settle for the Mediterranean segment using the metal because the carriers were uncomfortable. As a result of the decision quagmire, consortium membership has steadily become small since 1995 with NTT's project with telecom outsider Mitsui the logical end of this evolution, namely big carriers bringing on cash rich companies operating outside the telecom world.

IAMC exemplifies a recent trend towards linear subsea networks with multiple landing points using branching units to improve resiliency and lower end user latency by diverting traffic using wavelength routing to the shortest path. The branching is placed in deep ocean water where the threat of ships causing damage is likely. Multiple landings allow traffic flow to be tailored to point of destination. If traffic is destined for Osaka, why not go directly there as opposed to routing everything through a small number of Tokyo data centers? There will be three Japanese landings together with one Singapore and Malaysia landing. The Malaysia landing will enable an overland terrestrial path to Singapore. In this design the cable landing stations on each side are linked to each via fibre backhaul. This further enhances network uptime.

RFS is 2029 and undoubtedly NEC will get the business. NTT is likely to sell some pairs on this system and a lot of quarter and half fibre pair spectrum. The map suggests that NTT has not secured Philippine interest, but it is easy to drop a branching unit stub in the water just off its coast.

Map of the New Fibre Optic IAMC Subsea Cable

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