Bifrost subsea cable now ready for commercial launch

　　Overcoming delays, the 20,000km subsea cable that directly links Singapore to the West Coast of the United States is expected to begin carrying commercial traffic in the coming weeks.

　　Bifrost is officially ready for service and will begin carrying commercial traffic in the coming weeks, according to Singapore-based Keppel.

　　Spanning over 20,000 km, Bifrost is the first subsea cable system that directly connects Singapore to the West Coast of the United States via Indonesia, passing through the Java and Celebes Seas.

　　Keppel, along with Meta and Indonesia's Telin, formed a consortium to build a submarine cable system estimated to cost $760 million. Keppel contributed $350 million to the project. Alcatel Submarine Networks was chosen to carry out the construction of the Bifrost cable.

　　Manjot Singh Mann, CEO for connectivity at Keppel, said the landmark project will bolster digital connectivity between Southeast Asia and the United States.

　　While the main trunk of the new cable system connects Singapore, Guam, and Grover Beach, California, its branches extend connectivity to Jakarta and Manado in Indonesia, Davao in the Philippines, and Winema, Oregon. This setup enables dynamic traffic routing and robust regional interconnection.

　　"The Bifrost Cable System will reinforce Singapore's position as a leading digital hub in Asia and support the region's rapidly growing digital economy. We look forward to expanding our subsea cable footprint across Asia and beyond, as an integrated ecosystem partner to global cloud players and technology leaders," Mann added in a statement.

　　Adding redundancy to one of the busiest digital corridors

　　Bifrost opens a new route across the Pacific, providing over 260 Tbit/s of additional capacity and improving the reliability of one of the world's busiest digital corridors. The subsea cable system provides a round-trip latency of nearly 165 milliseconds between Singapore and the United States – up to 10 milliseconds faster than many existing systems.

　　According to Keppel, Bifrost is designed to support AI workloads, cloud-native platforms and real-time digital services.

　　Keppel has been assigned five out of a total of 12 fiber pairs in Bifrost. The five fiber pairs are jointly owned by Keppel and its private fund co-investors through a 40-60 joint venture.

　　The Bifrost cable was originally scheduled to enter service in the second quarter of 2024, but it was delayed due to bad weather and difficulties in obtaining permits to land the cable in Indonesia and pass through Indonesian waters. It was not until the beginning of June 2024 that Telin began constructing the cable landing station in Jakarta for the Bifrost cable system.