Palau and ECHO submarine cable interconnection to be completed and put into operation in 2024

Palau Submarine Cable Company has recently begun to deploy a link path with the ECHO submarine optical cable system to achieve interconnection with international networks.

Palau Submarine Cable Company has recently begun to deploy a link path with the ECHO submarine optical cable system to achieve interconnection with international networks.

The path was built to connect the island nation of Palau with the ECHO submarine optical cable system. Funding for the project comes from grants and loans from Palau, Japan, Australia, and the United States.

The submarine cable will connect from a base in the port of Ngardmau to the deep waters 7km away. The next step is to lay a branch path up to 100 kilometers to realize the interconnection with ECHO.

The ECHO submarine cable system runs from Eureka, California, the USA to Changi North, Singapore, with two branches to Agat and Piti (Guam), and plans to land in Tanjung Pakis, Indonesia.

ECHO will provide a capacity of 12Tbps per pair of fibers, of which the 16,026km backbone consists of 12 fiber pairs. The two 372km branches to Guam (BU1 and BU2) will each have 12 fiber pairs, while the 234km branch unit to Indonesia (BU3) will include 4 fiber pairs.

The system, developed by Facebook, Google and XL Axiata, is due to be completed in the third quarter of 2023, while the Palau branch is expected to be connected in the first quarter of 2024.