LS Cable & System secured its first international submarine telecommunications contract, joining a consortium led by Microsoft Corp. and Amazon Web Services to build an undersea cable network between South Korea and Japan.
The Korea-Japan Cable Network project, known as JAKO, involves constructing approximately 260 kilometers of optical fiber cable linking Busan and Fukuoka, with completion targeted for 2027. Construction is scheduled to begin this year.
LS Cable will handle the engineering, procurement and construction work on a turnkey basis, while its subsidiary LS Marine Solutions takes responsibility for underwater installation. The Korean cable manufacturer has not disclosed the contract value.
The consortium includes Korea’s Dream Line and Japan’s Arteria Networks alongside the U.S. technology giants. The project aims to support growing data traffic from artificial intelligence applications and cloud computing services.
The new cable system will provide an alternative route to the existing Korea-Japan Cable Network, which entered service in 2002 with a 25-year operational lifespan. Technology companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have become increasingly active in submarine cable construction due to their massive bandwidth requirements for data center operations.
The partnership marks LS Cable’s entry into the international submarine telecommunications market, where geopolitical considerations increasingly influence infrastructure investment decisions across Asia-Pacific routes.
