By Gigi Onag
September 22, 2026
As the explosive growth of artificial intelligence workloads fundamentally reshapes global infrastructure requirements, Australia-based subsea cable operator Subco has announced a massive expansion initiative. The company has officially unveiled plans for three new hypercable projects—designated APX North, APX-2, and APX West—designed to dramatically increase subsea capacity across the Asia-Pacific region. All three expansive infrastructure projects are slated for completion by 2029, marking a crucial step forward in addressing the data transmission bottlenecks threatening the future of regional AI development.
Subco is currently in the process of finalizing critical operational details, including cable manufacturing supply agreements and specialized vessel allocation. The company anticipates that the formal Contract in Force (CIF) for all three systems will be fully executed by early next year. Reflecting the immense data-carrying capacity required for modern enterprise networks and hyperscale computing, all three proposed cable systems are engineered with a robust 24-fiber pair configuration.
"I know it’s ambitious, but it’s achievable and it’s necessary," said Subco founder and co-CEO Bevan Slattery in an official statement detailing the announcement.
Slattery emphasized that industry observers and stakeholders have been remarkably slow to recognize a fundamental bottleneck in the AI ecosystem: that advanced artificial intelligence factories are functionally ineffective without massive, high-capacity subsea connectivity capable of seamlessly moving tokens from centralized compute facilities to end users across international borders.
"That’s why we are about to undertake the single largest subsea infrastructure build ever by a carrier in the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the build itself huge, but the timeframe is compressed with over 40,000km of cable to be installed in just over three years," Slattery added, highlighting the unprecedented scale and velocity of the upcoming deployment.
Project Details
The newly announced portfolio features distinct, highly strategic routes designed to alleviate long-term capacity constraints. Among them, the APX North cable spans approximately 9,500 kilometers, establishing a vital digital corridor connecting Sydney with Japan via Guam. According to Subco, this infrastructure will represent the very first hypercable running directly from Australia to Guam’s bustling interconnection hub, as well as the inaugural system to deliver a direct, uninterrupted connection between Japan and Australia.
Similar in architectural design to Subco’s recently launched Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth (SMAP) cable, APX North will incorporate advanced switched branching units. These specialized units will enable selected fiber pairs to deliberately bypass Guam entirely, thereby establishing a direct, low-latency connection between Australia and Japan.
Complementing this route, the 10,000-kilometer APX East-2 cable will establish a trans-Pacific bridge connecting Australia and Japan directly to Los Angeles via Guam.
"This segment is vital and will serve as the backbone for trans-Pacific traffic between Asia and the US, as well as providing diverse connectivity for Australia and Japan via APX North. We expect this system to be incredibly popular," Slattery noted regarding the strategic importance of the trans-Pacific link.
This builds upon Subco’s earlier roadmap, specifically the APX East-1 system announced in January of this year, which will offer an alternative pathway to the United States by forging a deep-water link connecting Sydney directly with San Diego. That specific system remains on track to become fully operational by the fourth quarter of 2028, with subsequent extensions reaching out to Hawaii and Fiji scheduled for completion the following year.
Meanwhile, addressing regional connectivity within Southeast Asia, the 4,600-kilometer APX West cable will link Perth to Singapore, featuring strategic branching units extending into Jakarta and Batam in Indonesia. Subco states that this network architecture is specifically designed to inject enhanced resilience and operational flexibility into the region by enabling dynamic traffic switching in and out of newly emerging regional interconnection hubs situated in Batam and Jakarta.
"Singapore and Indonesia remain critical to Asia’s connectivity landscape, and their strategic importance will only grow as bandwidth demand accelerates, and new interconnection hubs are needed to deliver greater flexibility and route diversity," Slattery explained. "We are building as much of that as possible into our system design and making that available to our cornerstone customers through APX West."
FLAG Upgrades Echo Cable
In related developments across the broader subsea telecommunications market, FLAG, a privately owned subsea cable network operator, has announced comprehensive plans to upgrade its dedicated fiber pair on the high-profile Echo submarine cable system. This enhancement will introduce advanced 400 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 800GbE services bridging Asia and North America.
The upgrade follows FLAG’s strategic acquisition last December of dedicated capacity from Google’s forthcoming Echo submarine system, a move that successfully integrated a new, high-performance trans-Pacific route into the company’s global network infrastructure.
To execute the upgrade, the private subsea cable firm will deploy Ciena’s cutting-edge Waveserver platform, equipped with WaveLogic 6 Extreme (WL6e) 1.6 Tbit/s coherent optics, running alongside an RLS line system across its more than 16,000-kilometer dedicated fiber pair on the Echo system. Company executives emphasize that the technical enhancement will optimize the capabilities of one of the few existing direct cable routes connecting Singapore and the United States directly.
"Our investment in Echo enables us to transport rapidly growing volumes of AI, cloud, and enterprise traffic across one of the world’s most important digital corridors," said Brad Kneller, chief network officer at FLAG. "Using Ciena’s leading coherent optical technology, we can rapidly bring new 400GbE and 800GbE services to market while delivering the scale, resiliency, and performance our customers require as AI and cloud traffic continue to accelerate."
Construction of Candle Cable System
Further signaling robust momentum in regional subsea development, Indonesian telecommunication operator XLSmart has confirmed that physical construction of the Candle cable system is officially underway. The milestone was marked by the ceremonial deployment of a golden buoy at Tanjung Bemban in Batam, designated as the official landing point for the Indonesian segment of the expansive 8,000-kilometer subsea cable system.
XLSmart participates as a key consortium member funding the development of the Candle cable system, working alongside major global technology and telecom players including Meta, Globe Telecom, IPS Telekom Malaysia, and Japan’s SoftBank.
The regional cable initiative, which was originally unveiled last September, is engineered to connect Japan and Singapore, while incorporating crucial branching links extending to Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. XLSmart management has indicated that the company is actively collaborating alongside its consortium partners to navigate and secure all necessary regulatory approvals and governmental permits from the six distinct countries whose territorial waters the extensive cable route must traverse.
With planning, engineering, and initial deployment phases now actively progressing, the Candle cable system is currently projected to achieve full commercial operation by 2028, further fortifying the digital backbone supporting the Indo-Pacific’s rapid technological evolution.
