Digital Realty and BW Digital to Build 1.6 Pb/s Subsea Cable Linking Singapore and Batam
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Digital Realty executives outlined plans this week to expand distributed digital infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific region, connecting core hubs in Singapore with growing capacity markets in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Developed with BW Digital, the Nongsa-Changi Cable System will deliver more than 1.6 petabits per second of capacity. The line connects Singapore’s SIN12 data center directly to Batam’s NDP1 facility with a targeted latency of less than two milliseconds.
Digital Realty’s Wilfried Dudink and Govind Choudhary noted that subsea connectivity is becoming integral to artificial intelligence deployments as operators split localized inference from large model training across regional hubs.
Splitting Training From Inference
Workload requirements have split sharply over the past two years. Training foundational models demands contiguous megawatts of power and heavy cooling capacity. That creates bottlenecks in land-constrained cities. Inference tasks, by contrast, must sit beside enterprise users and sovereign data stores to prevent latency.
New software frameworks like Nvidia NeMo support model training across physically separated sites. This turns subsea optical lines into direct extensions of internal data center architecture. Digital Realty is adding fiber density to feed these distributed pipelines. Its KUL10 facility in Malaysia now hosts over 6,000 cores of long-haul and regional fiber.
As capacity develops across Southeast Asia, we increasingly see Singapore serving as a connectivity and governance hub for the region, hosting latency-sensitive and sovereign workloads in the city-state while neighboring markets provide greater capacity for larger compute and AI need.
Subsea Links Shift Border Economics
Landing agreements and cross-border latency targets are reshaping industrial land values. Johor in southern Malaysia and Indonesia’s Riau Islands have absorbed billions of dollars in campus commitments. Hyperscalers want cheaper land and faster utility approvals. Still, isolated compute parks face severe limits without low-latency ties back to Singapore.
“Its KUL10 facility in Malaysia now hosts over 6,000 cores of long-haul and regional fiber.”
Enterprise buyers and regional logistics groups now face altered vendor choices. Companies building automation tools cannot rely on distant data centers without lag. Sub-two-millisecond links to Batam and multi-fiber routes to Kuala Lumpur solve this problem. Tenants can maintain compliance within national borders while tapping shared regional models.
Operational risk now clusters along busy maritime corridors. Routes through the Malacca Strait and Singapore Strait face dense ship traffic. Cable armoring, diverse routing, and rapid repair access have become critical commercial factors for operators promising uptime.
Enterprise Constraints Across APAC
Urgency is mounting as corporate IT budgets shift from pilot trials to production systems. Operators must supply liquid-cooled racks for high-density hardware. Older raised-floor sites cannot handle these power draws.
Digital Realty survey data covering 2,131 global technology leaders shows 40 per cent view physical infrastructure shortages as their primary roadblock, up from nine per cent in 2024. The study found 88 per cent of organizations run distributed architectures. Meanwhile, 86 per cent pursue sovereign data deployments to meet local regulations.
Spending plans reflect that push. Enterprise respondents forecast an average 32 per cent jump in artificial intelligence budgets over the next twelve months. Fully 79 per cent plan live deployments before late 2026. Nearly two-thirds expect measurable returns on compute investments within six to 24 months.
Next Deployments and Power Demands
Network builds outside Asia follow a similar blueprint. In Turkey, a joint venture with Ronesans Infrastructure will deliver a 22-megawatt carrier-neutral campus in Ankara by 2028. Planned expansions in Istanbul will link Mediterranean traffic with Asian routing tables.
Across Asia, expansions are underway in India, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and Australia. Engineering teams are retrofitting existing halls and designing greenfield facilities. These sites accommodate direct-to-chip liquid cooling alongside high-airflow layouts for dense racks.
Delivery timelines on the Nongsa-Changi cable route and power hookups at satellite sites present the next hurdles. Corporate IT teams are shifting over half of their private compute workloads into dedicated cloud environments. Handover dates across 2026 and 2027 will decide which regional hubs secure those incoming workloads.
Questions & Answers
Q.What is the primary purpose of the new Nongsa-Changi Cable System?
What is the primary purpose of the new Nongsa-Changi Cable System?
The cable system is designed to expand distributed digital infrastructure across the Asia-Pacific region. It connects core hubs in Singapore with growing capacity markets in Indonesia and Malaysia, specifically linking SIN12 to NDP1.
Q.Why are subsea cable connections like this becoming more important for artificial intelligence applications?
Why are subsea cable connections like this becoming more important for artificial intelligence applications?
Subsea connectivity is crucial because AI operators are splitting localized inference from large model training across regional hubs. It allows training foundational models in areas with ample power and cooling, while inference tasks remain close to users, preventing latency.
Q.How are landing agreements and cross-border latency targets affecting industrial land values in the region?
How are landing agreements and cross-border latency targets affecting industrial land values in the region?
These factors are reshaping industrial land values, with Johor and the Riau Islands absorbing billions in campus commitments. Hyperscalers seek cheaper land and faster utility approvals, but require low-latency ties back to Singapore.
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