Nokia upgrades Southeast Asian subsea cable to support regional AI infrastructure expansion

Nokia has been selected to upgrade the Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand subsea cable system using its latest optical technology. The initiative will significantly increase network capacity and reduce power consumption, supporting the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and hyperscale data center investments across Southeast Asia.

According to official disclosures, Nokia, a Finnish multinational telecommunications corporation, has been selected by Symphony Communication, a prominent Thai network operator, to upgrade the Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT) subsea cable. The project will deploy Nokia’s sixth-generation coherent optics to replace legacy terminal equipment.

This modernization significantly impacts regional digital infrastructure by tripling fiber capacity to 30 Tbps while reducing power consumption by 60 percent. The enhanced low-latency connectivity is engineered to support data-intensive applications, including artificial intelligence inference and enterprise cloud services, across Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The upgrade directly aligns with Thailand’s strategic expansion as a Southeast Asian digital hub. The MCT system uniquely lands in Rayong within the Eastern Economic Corridor, the primary focal point for AI-driven data center developments. Driven by favorable policies, Thailand has attracted over $23 billion in data center investments across multiple projects.

For global hyperscalers and enterprise stakeholders, the enhanced network provides a secure, sovereign routing option. Strategically, this deployment strengthens Nokia’s competitive positioning in the Asia-Pacific subsea infrastructure sector, addressing the urgent market demand for scalable, energy-efficient connectivity solutions.