China Mobile to connect Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, San Francisco, and Singapore Bay areas with BtoBE submarine cable

China Mobile International (CMI) says that it will build the BtBE submarine cable connecting the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area, and Singapore. Transmission efficiency between globally important cities in the Pacific Rim will be further improved by the BtoBE submarine cable, which will link the two large-scale bay areas of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay and San Francisco Bay.

CMI and the consortium members signed the project's memorandum of cooperation in January of this year. With construction starting in July, CMI expects the cable system to be operational by 2021.

The system will have a total capacity of 108-Tbps and a latency less than 130 msec, CMI asserts. The carrier says that BtoBE is the first submarine cable to directly connect the United States and Singapore with a latency less than 150 msec.

The Southeast Asia-Japan 2 (SJC2) submarine cable is CMI's most recent undersea network investment, and features up to eight fiber pairs of high capacity optical fiber with 144 Tbps of total initial design capacity (see "NEC to build submarine cable for Southeast Asia–Japan 2 consortium"). CMI's fiber on BtoBE will be linked to the SJC2 undersea cable for further connection to areas in Asia. Additionally, the BtoBE fiber-optic cable system will connect to CMI's three international data centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. to form a ring among the region's major markets by offering high speed, short latency transmission.

According to CMI, it finished laying the first cross-border optical cable on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in March, creating new interconnectivity between Zhuhai and Hong Kong. The BtoBE submarine cable construction is part of CMI's worldwide network deployment strategy to cover APAC, expand West, and further.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, CMI currently owns 138 oversea points of presence (PoPs), and over 40 submarine and terrestrial cables globally, with more than 23-Tbps total bandwidth capacity. It also owns terrestrial systems with directl access to 8 of China's neighboring countries for varying cross boarder connections. To promote additional international connectivity, CMI plans to continue building global transmission networks with broad coverage, high capacity, and short latency.

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