The Bifrost Cable System (Bifrost), the world’s first subsea cable system directly linking Singapore to the west coast of USA via Indonesia, is officially ready for commercial service, Keppel Ltd. announced in a statement yesterday.
Spanning over 20,000 km, the cable system was engineered to support AI workloads, cloud-native platforms, and real-time digital services, offering a round-trip latency of just under 165 milliseconds between Singapore and the USA—up to 10 milliseconds faster than many existing systems. By charting a new route across the Pacific, Bifrost also introduced more than 260 Tbps of additional capacity thus enhancing the resiliency of one of the world’s most active digital corridors. With Bifrost on track to go live in the coming weeks, the system is expected to play a pivotal role in supporting the next wave of digital transformation and strengthening global data exchange, the statement added.
w.media had in March reported that the Bifrost Cable System was expected to be ready for commercial service in the second half of 2025 and that Keppel is in a joint build agreement with Meta and Telin to own and develop the Bifrost Cable System. When fully commissioned, it will be the largest capacity high-speed transmission cable across the Pacific Ocean. Keppel first embarked on the Bifrost system in March 2021 with its partners Meta and Telin. Bifrost is part of Keppel’s connectivity system, which includes power, green energy, cooling, subsea cable connectivity and data centre solutions.
“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,” said Manjot Singh Mann, CEO, Connectivity, Keppel.
Keppel has been assigned five out of a total of 12 fibre pairs in Bifrost. The five fibre pairs are jointly owned by Keppel and its private fund co-investors through a 40-60 joint venture.
Bifrost lands in Singapore, Guam, and Grover Beach, California, with branching units extending connectivity to Jakarta and Manado in Indonesia, Davao in the Philippines, and Winema, Oregon in the USA.
In Davao, Converge Information and Communications Technology Solutions, Inc. (Converge) will be the landing party. “The Philippines is in a prime location being in the centre of the region, so this critical digital infrastructure – the Bifrost Cable System – is envisioned to support the booming connectivity needs of the Asia-Pacific region and provide an important direct link with the US. This will not only boost the company’s international bandwidth capacity, but for the Philippines, it will mean redundancy and diversity in network infrastructure to power the country’s digital journeys,” said Dennis Anthony Uy, CEO of Converge.
Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), a global leader in the development of subsea cable systems, undertook the construction of Bifrost. “Reaching this new milestone is a testament to the hard work of ASN teams working hand in hand with our client to bring Bifrost to Ready for Service,” said Alain Biston, CEO of ASN.
Headquartered in Singapore, Keppel Ltd. is a global asset manager and operator spanning the areas of infrastructure, real estate and connectivity.