TKO Connect subsea cable starts operations in Hong Kong

The newest subsea cable system in Hong Kong, known as TKO Connect, has started operations providing a direct connection between the Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate in Sai Kung, New Territories and Siu Sai Wan in Chai Wan on Hong Kong Island.

The new subsea cable system is yet another stab at bolstering the city's position as Asia's data center hub.

Several carriers and companies have established high-tier data centers at TKO Industrial Estate, including the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, HKColo, NTT, Digital Realty, China Mobile, HSBC, China Unicom, Global Switch and MEGA Plus.

Likewise, the areas around Siu Sai Wan are also a preferred location for high-tier data centers and large-scale data co-location facilities in the wake of the government's re-industrialization initiative that allows the conversion of old industrial buildings into data centers.

Built for resilience

TKO Connect is jointly financed by telco operator Hong Kong Broadband Network and data center provider SUNeVISION. It is the first and only dual-path subsea cable in Hong Kong, with two physical cables specifically built to achieve full resilience and ensure network continuity.

It is a dedicated cable system directly linking SUNeVISION's two facilities: MEGA-i in Chai Wan and MEGA Plus in Tseung Kwan O.

Spanning approximately three kilometers between the two precincts, TKO Connect provides the most direct and shortest route between MEGA-i and MEGA Plus – more than 20 kilometers shorter and four times faster than alternate land routes, with latency as low as 0.014 milliseconds.

The cable terminates directly at the carrier-neutral MEGA-i with minimal fiber splicing and loss. The cable will be further expanded to MEGA IDC, SUNeVISION's new hyperscale data center in Tseung Kwan O currently under development.

"Our flagship data center MEGA-i has for many years served as a critical interconnection hub for Asia and globally. The completion of TKO Connect, which links up MEGA-i with our TKO data centers will substantially increase speed and improve latency of data exchange among these data centers," Allen Fung, vice chairman and executive director at SUNeVISION, said in a statement.

"This also allows our customers to build resilience by having multiple hubs within our MEGA Campus," he added.