29 November 2024

Hexa Capital Consultancy has chosen Globe Telecom to serve as the landing party in the Philippines for its trans-Pacific Malaysia-US (MYUS) Cable System.

The MYUS cable will run over 19,000km from Sedili, Malaysia to Guam, and from there to Florence, Oregon, with landing points also planned for Batam, Jakarta and Balikpapan in Indonesia, and Davao City in the Philippines. The MYUS cable is designed as a 16-fibre-pair system, each with a minimum capacity of 15Tbps, for a total initial capacity of 240Tbps.

Under the deal, Globe will build the Davao City landing station.

The MYUS cable will provide needed extra international capacity to support Malaysia’s growing data centre footprint that includes major hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. Azhari also said the MYUS route avoids disputed waters in Southeast Asia to ensure its operational sustainability.

Malaysia currently connects to almost 20 international subsea cable systems, but only the Asia-America Gateway (AAG) club cable connects to the US. The MYUS cable would be the first private subsea cable to serve that route. It also provides a more direct route, as the AAG detours through Hong Kong before heading out to the US coast.

Hexa says the cable project will cost an estimated US$720 million. The company expects to secure financing for the cable by the middle of next year, which would enable the system to be ready for service by mid-2028.