NTT reveals management plans for JUNO Trans-Pacific submarine cable system

With rapid growth of the global digital economy, increasing demand for cloud solutions and lower latency, along with an undersea internet cable sector quickly becoming more critical to global internet infrastructure, NTT Japan, Mitsui & Co, PC Landing and JA Mitsui Leasing have come together to launch a company to construct and operate the JUNO Trans-Pacific submarine cable system.

The new company, Seren Juno Network Co, believes that JUNO can provide fast and reliable network services to global major global technology companies, OTTs and telecommunication carriers by enabling them to strengthen the telecommunications environment in the US and Asia, through reliable and secure sales, operations and management support.

Located midway between the US and key Asian markets, Japan has played the important role of Data Hub in the Asia-Pacific region. As such, JUNO is expected to be an ideal addition to the undersea cable network and key to supporting the global internet backbone, and further growth in Asia-Pacific countries and worldwide.

As they announced the launch of Seren, the partners cited data from industry analyst firm TeleGeography, which calculated that global internet bandwidth rose 29% in 2021 and that this growth trajectory is expected to continue upward driven by the deployment of 5G, internet of things (IoT) and edge compute technologies. With existing Japan-US cables nearing capacity, Seren said that JUNO was very much needed to meet the increasing demand for global internet bandwidth.

Said to offer several unique benefits to customers, JUNO has been designed to introduce to customers what is claimed to be leading-edge space division multiplexing (SDM) technology, enabling the provision of 20 optical fibre pairs (40 cores) per cable. This is a distinct advantage on conventional technology, which currently provides a maximum of 16 fibre pairs, or 32 cores.

The network, expected to begin operating at the end of 2024, is designed to provide a maximum capacity of 350Tbps, and is said to be the largest among any existing cable system between Japan and the US and JUNO. Reportedly, it can also alter the amount of bandwidth to each branch route according to demand and in response to customers’ evolving requirements. 

The network is said to ensure high resiliency by connecting to two separate landing stations in-between Japan and the US, providing additional security and resilience against any potential disturbances due to rough weather conditions, particularly along the coastal areas of Japan.

NTT has been at the centre of global internet infrastructure development and operations with a role in several subsea cable projects, including Jupiter, MIST, ASE, APG, PC-1, and Apricot, as well as JUNO.

Commenting on the new project, Takanobu Maeda, president and chief executive officer of NTT Japan Corporation, said: “This new subsea cable is the latest joint effort NTT has led in a long and proud history of providing reliable global internet infrastructure.”