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A new fibre optic cable spanning 7,800km from Japan to Singapore and capable of delivering speeds of 40Gb/s has opened.

The Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) connects a number of Asian countries together via an underwater line, including Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The cable was laid out in as straight a line as possible to reduce data transfer times down to just 65 milliseconds form one end to the other, or speeds of 40Gb/s, hundreds of times faster than the broadband connections most people are used to.


Japan to Singapore undersea cable opens with 40Gb/s speeds

The superfast connection is just 3 milliseconds faster than other lines connecting Tokyo to Singapore, but that fraction of time is vital to high frequency trading, where thousands of financial transactions are made in under one second, and where such a tiny amount of time can be the deciding factor in a successful trade.

The ASE will help make up for several undersea cables in Japanese waters that were damaged in the disastrous 2011 earthquake. This event and an earlier one in 2006 led to the new cable being laid in different places that are less prone to seismic shifts.

The cable network is operated by Japan's NTT, Singapore's StarHub, Telekom Malaysia, and the Phillipines' PLDT.