Japan’s $300 Million Undersea Cable Gamble: Inside the Global Race to Secure the Internet’s Lifelines
Japan’s decision to bankroll NEC’s purchase of undersea cable vessels signals a major policy shift to protect the nation’s digital lifelines. According to officials, Tokyo is prepared to front hundreds of millions of dollars so that NEC – Asia’s biggest undersea cable installer – can acquire ocean-going cable-laying ships of its own Tomshardware Lightreading. Each such ship is a massive specialized vessel equipped to carry and slowly spool out thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cable across ocean floors. Until now, NEC has owned zero of these, relying instead on leasing a Norwegian ship and renting smaller domestic vessels for regional projects Tomshardware. This made Japan an outlier; its rivals SubCom, Alcatel Submarine Networks, and HMN Tech each operate fleets of 2–7 cable ships to swiftly serve their needs Tomshardware Lightreading.
