Hong Kong – PCCW Global, the international operating division of HKT, Hong Kong’s premier telecommunications service provider, has come together with consortium members Amazon, Facebook, NTT Communications, PLDT and SoftBank to construct JUPITER, a high-capacity cable system that will connect Maruyama and Shima in Japan with Los Angeles in the USA and Daet in the Philippines, with a target ready-for-service date of early 2020.

The JUPITER network will deliver a capacity of more than 60 Tbps over a route of approximately 14,000km utilizing the latest submersible Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) which employs Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) technology, providing a greater diversity of connections and enhanced reliability for customers as well as optimised connectivity to data centres on the West Coast of the USA.

Bandwidth demand over the trans-Pacific route has more than tripled in just four years, making the timing of the decision to construct JUPITER crucial to the continued provision of cost-effective trans-Pacific solutions. Moreover, this demand trend is expected to continue with new, bandwidth-intensive technologies including Virtual Reality (VR), social media applications, video streaming, and gaming content growing rapidly in popularity. Mr. Marc Halbfinger, Chief Executive Officer of PCCW Global, said, “Consumers and enterprises continue to require significantly increasing amounts of bandwidth whether for their own applications, or for their interface with content providers, hosting companies and cloud services. The JUPITER network will play a crucial role in serving this increased demand across the key trans-Pacific artery.”