5 days ago
Tata Communications announces TGN-IA2 subsea cable linking Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan to enhance connectivity
Tata Communications
, on Tuesday, announced the
TGN-IA2 subsea cable
system to enhance connectivity for businesses across Asia. The cable connects Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan and complements the existing TGN-IA cable system by offering interconnections to other regions.
The system is constructed by the
Asia Direct Cable
(ADC) consortium, of which, half-a-fibre pair is fully operated and managed by Tata Communications. This allows the company to independently manage capacity upgrades and make faster provisioning for customers.
The ADC is a global consortium of leading communications and technology companies, including NT (Thailand), China Telecom, China Unicom, PLDT Inc., Singtel, SoftBank Corp., Tata Communications and Viettel.
The multi-terabits capacity TGN-IA2 cable is expected to significantly enhance data transfer capabilities and offer diverse, scalable bandwidth solutions to hyperscalers, multinational corporations, and telecom operators.
Tata Communications operates multiple terabytes of capacities across its 500,000+ km round-the-globe subsea optical fibre network. This includes TGN-TIC, TGN-EA (Eurasia), TGN-Gulf, TGN-P (Pacific), TGN-A (Atlantic) and others.
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The Asia-Pacific region, particularly Southeast Asia, is now a global data transmission hub, with growing subsea investments from companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. The region is witnessing a rapid build-out of
hyperscale data centres
, and
submarine cables
are critical to ensuring low-latency, high-throughput links between these facilities.
According to Telegeography, the global demand for international bandwidth is growing at over 30% annually, and Asia accounts for a significant share of this surge. Countries like India, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines are now key landing points for such cables, facilitating
digital trade and cloud infrastructure
deployment.
India has recently seen large commitments in this space. For instance, Google is set to commission its Blue-Raman submarine cable system in Mumbai this year. Last month, Meta announced the 'Waterworth' project—the world's longest subsea cable connecting five continents with landings in India. Japan's NTT Data is also set to commission MIST - its first submarine cable system connecting Malaysia, India, Singapore and Thailand, entailing a total investment of $400 million.
Meanwhile, telecom operator
Bharti Airtel
has landed SEA-ME-WE-6 and 2Africa Pearls cables on Indian shores this year. Reliance Jio is also set to commission the India-Asia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX) submarine cable systems, expanding the country's existing capacity significantly.
