KDDI (News - Alert) Corporation, a Telehouse America sister company, is joining several other telecommunications companies to start construction on a project that will link Brunei, mainland China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan and Singapore, with options to extend to Indonesia and Thailand.

The group of companies joined together to form the South-East Asia Japan Cable (SJC) system. The SJC consortium is working to construct a new international submarine cable system and two companies have been selected to implement the project, according to company officials.

The cable, which was initially planned to be 8,300 km in length and link five countries, is now expected to be 8,900 km – with the potential to expand up to 10,700 km – and link up to eight countries.

"The SJC is carefully designed to serve as many direct circuits between the landing points/POPs and is routed nearer the Northern part of the Philippines, thereby avoiding an area that is frequently stricken by earthquakes,” Ooi Seng Keat, chairman of the SJC executive committee, said in a statement. “The SJC will enable members of the consortium to meet the growing demands of the region, not just for increased Internet usage, but bandwidth intensive applications such as Internet TV, games and enterprise data exchange."

The SJC consortium is made up of Brunei International Gateway (News - Alert) Sendirian Berhad (BIG), China Mobile, China Telecommunications Corporation, China Telecom (Hong Kong) International Ltd., Donghwa Telecom Co., Ltd., Globe Telecom (News - Alert), Inc., Google SJC Bermuda Ltd., KDDI Corporation, Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SingTel), PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin), Telemedia Pacific Inc. (TPI) and TOT Public Co., Ltd. (TOT).

TE SubCom (SubCom) and NEC (News - Alert) Corporation (NEC) will supply and install the system and the SJC system is expected to be ready for service in 2H-2013.

KDDI is also involved in another outreach effort –bringing financial relief to those affected in Japan. Telehouse is backing its sister company.

“TELEHOUSE (News - Alert) America is deeply saddened by the recent events in Japan,” Telehouse’s homepage displayed the beginning of this week. “Our thoughts are with our colleagues, friends, clients, and partners during this difficult time.”

As of March 30, Telehouse – a pioneer in data centers and colocation facilities – owns and operates 31 data center facilities in Japan. Official updates from the colocation company revealed that all sites were fully operational with “no unplanned outages” as of March 30.

Telehouse urges its customers to support the relief efforts of its sister company KDDI America. Site visitors can give a monetary gift to the American Red Cross to support KDDI’s disaster relief efforts to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific.