SEA-H2X Cable Starts Service As Cambodia-Hong Kong Link Reaches Landing Station
Light Reading reported that SEA-H2X has entered commercial service after delays, while China Unicom Global project material put the SHV-HK Cambodia-Hong Kong design at 80 Tbit/s.
SEA-H2X is in commercial operation after a two-year delay.
A second Intra-Asia cable, SHV-HK, has reached its Hong Kong landing station but has not yet entered service.
Light Reading reported on July 28 that the 5,746-kilometre SEA-H2X route links Hong Kong and Singapore through branches to China, Thailand and the Philippines.
SHV-HK is designed as a direct Cambodia-Hong Kong connection.
SEA-H2X Opens With More Than 200 Tbit/s Design Capacity
The project statement put SEA-H2X's main trunk at eight fibre pairs between Hong Kong and Singapore, with design capacity exceeding 200 Tbit/s.
The operator led the funding consortium with China Unicom and Converge ICT Solutions, and invested in four trunk fibre pairs plus branch segments to Hainan, the Philippines and Thailand.
Commercial service arrived after the initial 2024 operational target.
The cable was announced in 2022, and the delay was linked to adverse weather and permitting setbacks during subsea construction.
The operator presented SEA-H2X as a regional routing project that would support cross-border cloud routing, reduce regional latency and form part of an Asia-Pacific corridor extending toward the Middle East and Europe.
It also tied the new route to its APG, SJC, SJC2, SEA-ME-WE 5, PEACE and IAX cable systems, along with terrestrial network, points of presence, data centre and intelligent-computing resources.
SHV-HK Lands In Hong Kong With 80 Tbit/s Design
The second milestone concerns Cambodia's international connectivity.
China Unicom Global's project material put SHV-HK at 80 Tbit/s of designed capacity across a core trunk cable and two stub cables, under a partnership with Cambodia's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
The cable arrived at China Unicom's Tseung Kwan O landing station last week.
China Unicom Global presented SHV-HK as the first direct submarine cable between Cambodia and Hong Kong.
Light Reading identified it as Cambodia's first state-owned submarine optical fibre cable system.
SHV-HK is expected to become Cambodia's third international submarine cable landing after the Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand system and Asia-Africa-Europe 1.
The source record put the project cost at more than $165 million and listed July 2025 as the initial completion expectation.
HMN Technologies Supplies Both Cable Systems
HMN Technologies was selected to supply and install both projects, giving the China-linked routes a common cable supplier.
SEA-H2X uses a multi-country backbone architecture with Open Cable technology and spectrum sharing, while SHV-HK is structured as a direct point-to-point corridor for Cambodia-Hong Kong traffic.
SEA-H2X uses a multi-country backbone to aggregate traffic across several countries and operators.
SHV-HK is a dedicated Cambodia-Hong Kong link designed for later extensions to hubs including Hainan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.
SEA-H2X is in commercial operation; SHV-HK has reached its Hong Kong landing station.
