• CANDLE reached Tanjung Bemban in Batam on 11 September, advancing construction of an 8,000km system linking six Asian markets
  • The cable is due to enter service in 2028, with commercial routes and local interconnection details still to be announced

The fact

XLSMART marked the Batam landing of the CANDLE submarine cable at Tanjung Bemban on 11 September, moving construction of the roughly 8,000km system forward. XLSMART described the event as a “Golden Buoy” landing. CANDLE is planned to enter service in 2028.

The cable is designed to connect Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan. Local reports say construction began in December 2024 and the system will use 24 fibre pairs. Partners named in the coverage include Meta, Globe Telecom, IPS, Telekom Malaysia and SoftBank, with NEC named as a technology supplier.

XLSMART’s enterprise business said the system could give Batam businesses and data centres another route to overseas markets once it is operational. Construction and permitting are still under way, and no earlier commercial launch date, customer pricing or detailed service offering has been disclosed.

The Assessment

For a data-centre customer in Batam, bringing the cable ashore is only one part of the connection. A facility still needs terrestrial fibre to reach the landing infrastructure, a provider selling capacity on CANDLE and an onward path to the market its traffic needs to reach.

That also matters for companies considering CANDLE as a backup route. A second submarine cable can improve resilience, but two services may still converge on the same local fibre, landing infrastructure or domestic backhaul. Customers will need to understand the full path before they can judge how independent a new connection really is.

For BTW readers, the bigger milestone will come when CANDLE becomes a service that customers can order. Interconnection points in Batam, available routes and the first commercial offerings will show whether the system gives local data centres a genuinely different path into the wider Asian network.

What to Watch

Watch for completion of the remaining cable work, permitting, and system testing ahead of the 2028 ready-for-service target. The first commercial offers should show where customers can connect in Batam, which onward routes are available and whether those paths are physically separate from existing services.