Singapore and Indonesia Launch Nongsa-Changi Subsea Cable to Power Regional AI Infrastructure
Source: The Straits Times
For all the talk about AI models and training data, the real bottleneck might just be the cables running under the sea. On July 20, Singapore and Indonesia marked the landing of the Nongsa-Changi Submarine Cable System — a 50-kilometre fibre-optic link between Batam and Changi designed to carry the data that...
For all the talk about AI models and training data, the real bottleneck might just be the cables running under the sea. On July 20, Singapore and Indonesia marked the landing of the Nongsa-Changi Submarine Cable System — a 50-kilometre fibre-optic link between Batam and Changi designed to carry the data that powers Southeast Asia's rapidly expanding AI and cloud infrastructure. The timing, coming just weeks before ASEAN is expected to sign a landmark digital economy framework pact, is deliberate.
The cable, jointly built by Telkom Indonesia's subsidiary Telin and Singapore-based digital infrastructure firm BW Digital, delivers 1.6 petabits per second of additional capacity with latency under two milliseconds — fast enough for AI inference workloads, high-frequency financial trading, and real-time cloud services. Speaking at the landing ceremony in Batam, Singapore Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong noted that as economies become increasingly digital, infrastructure projects like this one form "an important foundation to support economic growth." Indonesia's Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto described the cable as the physical foundation of a new digital corridor connecting the two countries.
The cable strengthens Batam's emerging role as a digital gateway for Southeast Asia. BW Digital's Nongsa Digital Park (NDP1) already provides 120 megawatts of IT capacity, while a separate hyperscale data centre campus by DayOne and the Indonesia Investment Authority (INA) is targeting up to 450 megawatts. Oracle has selected Batam for its Indonesia North Cloud Region, signalling confidence in the island's digital infrastructure. The project is one of two Batam-Singapore cable systems being developed by Telkom Group under its Indonesia Cable Express initiative, aimed at boosting international connectivity and Indonesia's digital sovereignty.
The cable landing comes two weeks after Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto met at the annual Singapore-Indonesia Leaders' Retreat, where both sides reaffirmed their commitment to developing the Batam-Bintan-Karimun (BBK) economic zone as a digital hub. Gan emphasised that Singapore and Indonesia bring complementary strengths to the partnership — Singapore offering global connectivity and a trusted business environment, Indonesia contributing scale, talent, land for future growth, and significant renewable energy potential. The project also highlights the broader ASEAN push for digital integration, with member states expected to sign a regional digital economy framework later this year.
Why it matters for Singapore: The Nongsa-Changi cable is a concrete example of how Singapore's digital hub strategy depends on regional infrastructure partnerships. Singapore has world-class data centre capacity and financial infrastructure, but land and energy constraints mean it needs proximate partners like Batam to scale its AI and cloud ambitions. For every terabit of data that flows through Changi's financial exchanges, there is now a low-latency path to Batam's hyperscale campuses — a corridor that effectively extends Singapore's digital footprint without requiring more physical land on the island. As AI workloads demand ever more compute and connectivity, this subsea link is the kind of infrastructure that determines whether regional AI hubs can actually deliver on their promise.
