Bifrost Submarine Cable System
First direct subsea cable connecting Singapore to North America via the Java Sea and Celebes Sea bypassing Taiwan
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The story
Bifrost is a groundbreaking 15,000-kilometer trans-Pacific subsea cable developed by Meta, Keppel Telecommunications & Transportation, and Telin (Indonesia). Unlike historical routes that routed north via Japan and the Luzon Strait, Bifrost charts a unique southern trajectory through the Java Sea, Celebes Sea, and south of the Philippines across Guam to southern California and Oregon. Built with high-capacity space-division multiplexing fiber, Bifrost delivers massive direct bandwidth between Southeast Asia and Silicon Valley while avoiding seismically vulnerable straits.
Notable
- Pioneers a direct trans-Pacific route connecting Singapore and Jakarta straight to the US West Coast.
- Spans over 15,000 kilometers crossing the Java Sea, Celebes Sea, and Pacific via Guam.
- Delivers up to 10.4 Tbps per fiber pair across multiple high-density fiber pairs.
- Significantly reduces trans-Pacific latency while circumventing earthquake-prone waters around Taiwan and Luzon.
Sites
| Code | Place | Role | Provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| SIN | Singapore (Tuas), Singapore | landing | Keppel T&T |
| JKT | Jakarta, Indonesia | landing | Telin |
| GUM | Piti (Guam), Guam | landing | Meta / RTI |
| SJC | Grover Beach (California), United States | landing | Meta |
Links
| From | To | Type | Capacity | Length | Year | Protected | Est. one-way latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SIN | JKT | submarine | 100 Tbps | 1,100 km | 2024 | no | ≈ 6.8 ms |
| JKT | GUM | submarine | 100 Tbps | 4,200 km | 2024 | no | ≈ 35.4 ms |
| GUM | SJC | submarine | 100 Tbps | 9,700 km | 2024 | no | ≈ 71.8 ms |
Latency marked ≈ is our estimate from the great-circle distance × 1.5 at 5 µs per km, not the operator's figure.
Sources
- Connecting Southeast Asia and North America with Echo and Bifrost subsea cables · Meta · 2021-03-29
- Keppel joins consortium to develop Bifrost Cable System · Keppel · 2021-03-29
Part of the open famous data centers dataset (CC BY 4.0). Updated 2026-10-15.
What is Bifrost Submarine Cable System famous for?
First direct subsea cable connecting Singapore to North America via the Java Sea and Celebes Sea bypassing Taiwan
How many sites and links does Bifrost Submarine Cable System have in this dataset?
4 sites and 3 links, of which 3 are recorded as not protected. Figures are from the public sources listed on the page.
Who operates Bifrost Submarine Cable System?
Bifrost Consortium (Meta, Keppel T&T, Telin)