KUALA LUMPUR, 22 September 2025 – Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) has entered a major consortium with Meta, SoftBank Corp, IPS Inc, PT XLSmart Telecom Sejahtera Tbk, and NEC Corporation to build the Candle submarine cable system, an undersea data super-highway that will connect ASEAN countries to Japan. With scheduled operations in 2028, Candle will stretch over 8,000 kilometres and is designed to be one of the region’s most advanced systems — featuring 24 fibre-pair cable linking Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
The partners say the investment responds to surging demand for data traffic, driven by growth in 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud services, and digital enterprises. TM’s CEO Amar Huzaimi Md Deris described TM’s participation as consistent with Malaysia’s ambition to be a regional digital hub: the project will strengthen TM’s ability to support hyperscalers, global service providers, and enterprise customers across ASEAN. TM also emphasises that Candle will offer critical redundancy and resilience — essential in an era where data disruptions can quickly escalate into regional business risk.
Why Candle Matters
The Candle cable system represents more than just expanded bandwidth. It is a bet on infrastructure resilience and digital sovereignty. The 24-fiber pair architecture allows much greater traffic capacity, lower latency, and redundancy — meaning alternate routing in case of faults or under-sea cable damages. As AI, cloud computing, streaming, e-commerce, and digital services expand exponentially in Southeast Asia, such infrastructure is becoming a linchpin for competitiveness and economic inclusion.
For Malaysia, TM’s role in the consortium may help anchor the country’s regional connectivity, reinforcing its aspirations under national digital-economy strategies to serve not only domestic users but also cross-border data flows. As more enterprises demand high-speed international connectivity — whether for cloud hosting, real-time AI workloads, gaming, or remote working — Malaysia’s position as a node becomes more advantageous.
Implications & Challenges
While the technical and economic upsides are clear, realizing the Candle project won’t be without its hurdles. The challenges include securing permits in multiple maritime jurisdictions, deploying repeaters and landing stations, managing costs for undersea cable maintenance, and ensuring cybersecurity for cross-border data transit. There are also geopolitical risks: submarine cable routes increasingly attract regulatory scrutiny, especially with concerns over data sovereignty and national security.
Nevertheless, in today’s global environment where digital infrastructure is viewed similarly to roads or ports, projects like Candle are investments in future readiness — enabling data continuity, improved service quality, and the backbone for digital transformation. For TM and its partners, demonstrating timely execution, operational reliability, and secure governance will be crucial.
Regional Infrastructure Outlook
Across Asia, the push for enhanced submarine cables, data centre expansion, and cloud interconnectivity is intensifying. Many Southeast Asian nations are part of multiple cable projects, highly sensitive to latency, fault risk, and the demand to connect remote islands and border-areas. AI applications, edge computing, cloud gaming, streaming, and remote work trends continue to drive demand.
For companies and investors, infrastructure firms, cable operators, and telecoms that have both technical expertise and regulatory agility are advantageous picks. Projects like Candle may provide opportunities for ancillary industries: cable maintenance, landing station infrastructure, cloud interconnect services, and higher-speed international peering.
What to Watch Going Forward
Key milestones to track include the financing and investment breakdown among the consortium partners, the exact route mapping (which undersea paths, landing points in Malaysia, any territorial deployment issues), securing permits in the countries involved, and the timetable for component procurement — especially for cable and amplifiers. Also critical will be how TM positions itself commercially: pricing of cable capacity, service level agreements, and how it leverages the new connectivity to provide value to enterprises and cloud providers.
