Google and Facebook plans new undersea cables to connect United States and Southeast Asia

The American social network giant Facebook is planning two undersea cables to connect United States and Southeast asian countries Indonesia and Singapore, to improve internet connection capacity between the regions.

The cables will be named Bifrost and Echo and it will be the first to directly connect United Stated and Indonesia.

The primary objective is to increase the connectivity for the eastern and central provinces, collaborating with Google and other telecommunication companies.

Kevin Salvadori, The Vice President of Facebook said

“Named Echo and Bifrost, those will be the first two cables to go through a new diverse route crossing the Java Sea and they will increase overall subsea capacity in the trans-pacific by about 70%.”

Kevin Salvadori also said that a good material investment is available in southeast asia.

Regulatory approval is required for the two cables.

Echo, one of the cable which is being built in partnership with Alphabet’s Google and “XL Axiata” an Indonesian telecommunications company is expected to be completed by the year 2023.

Bifrost, the other cable is being done in partnership with Telin which is a subsidiary of Indonesia’s Telkom and Keppel a Singaporean conglomerate and is expected to be finished by 2024.

In a recent survey of 270 million, 73% of Indonesia’s population are online and the majority browse web through Mobile data with less than 10 % using a broadband connection.

And large parts of the country remain without any internet access.

Previous year Facebook had said that it would deploy 3,000km (1,8641 miles) of fiber in Indonesia across 20 cities in addition to a previous deal to develop public wifi hot spots.

Mr. Salvadori also added that

“We are working with partners and regulators to meet all of the concerns that people have, and we look forward to that cable being a valuable, productive transpacific cable going forward in the near future.”