Bifrost Cable System enters service, links Asia to US

Keppel Ltd. announced that the Bifrost Cable System has officially achieved Ready for Service status and will begin carrying commercial traffic in the coming weeks.

The 20,000 km subsea cable is the world’s first to directly connect Singapore to the west coast of the United States via Indonesia, routing through the Java Sea and Celebes Sea.

Designed to handle AI workloads, cloud-native platforms, and real-time digital services, Bifrost delivers a round-trip latency of under 165 milliseconds between Singapore and the United States—up to 10 milliseconds faster than many existing systems.

By introducing more than 260 terabits per second of additional bandwidth, the system significantly enhances both capacity and resilience along one of the globe’s most active digital corridors.

“Keppel is proud to announce that the Bifrost Cable System has achieved Ready for Service status,” said Mr. Manjot Singh Mann, CEO, Connectivity, Keppel.

“This landmark project will bolster digital connectivity between Southeast Asia and the USA,” he said.

“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,” Mann added.

“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,” he said.

Keppel controls five of the 12 total fibre pairs in the Bifrost system, through a 40–60 joint venture with private fund co-investors.

The cable lands in Singapore, Guam, and Grover Beach, California, with branching units extending to Jakarta and Manado in Indonesia, Davao in the Philippines, and Winema, Oregon in the United States.

This regional layout enables dynamic routing of internet traffic and boosts interconnectivity across Southeast Asia and North America.

In the Philippines, Converge Information and Communications Technology Solutions Inc. will serve as the landing party for the Davao branch.

“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,” said Mr. Dennis Anthony Uy, CEO of Converge.

“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,” Uy said.

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the global firm responsible for Bifrost’s construction, confirmed the system’s delivery milestone.

“We are very proud to have been selected by Keppel and its partners to deliver this landmark project across the Pacific,” said Mr. Alain Biston, CEO of ASN.

“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,” Biston said.

As Bifrost prepares to go live, it is expected to play a critical role in future-proofing digital infrastructure, supporting next-generation applications, and enabling greater global data exchange.