• USTDA is funding a feasibility study for National Telecom's proposed Thailand-US Submarine Cable System
  • THUS could run up to 11,500 miles and connect Thailand with the United States through as many as five other Southeast Asian countries

The fact

The US Trade and Development Agency is funding a feasibility study for National Telecom Public Company Limited's proposed Thailand-US Submarine Cable System, or THUS. Thailand's state-owned operator has selected Florida-based APTelecom to carry out the work. THUS could extend up to 11,500 miles and connect Thailand with the United States through as many as five other Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. The proposed route would avoid the South China Sea.

The study will cover route design, technical requirements, commercial demand, financing and regulatory issues. The project is also intended to use an open-access model under which capacity could be sold to a wider range of customers. The USTDA grant funds the feasibility work; a construction budget, final route, landing points and ready-for-service date have not been announced.

The assessment

THUS is still a route proposal, so the resilience case depends on what the study shows about the entire connection. Avoiding the South China Sea would remove one shared exposure, but that alone does not make the service independent from other cables. Two routes can still meet at the same landing station, terrestrial corridor or onward network.

That makes the landing and backhaul design important to the commercial case. A carrier buying a second route for resilience will want to know where the cable comes ashore, how traffic leaves the landing station and where it joins other networks. Open access also matters only if operators can obtain capacity on workable terms rather than simply having another system available in principle.

For BTW readers, the project becomes more useful when National Telecom can show a route that remains separate from existing alternatives from the seabed through to the customer handoff. The feasibility study now has to establish whether that design is technically possible, commercially attractive and supported by enough demand to justify construction.

What to watch

Watch for the proposed landing points, terrestrial backhaul routes and connections to the five possible Southeast Asian markets. Customer commitments or capacity reservations would strengthen the demand case, while financing and supplier details would show whether THUS is moving beyond feasibility. Any route revision should also be checked for shared landing or onward-network dependencies.