XLSmart has begun construction of the 8,000-kilometre Candle Cable System, a subsea fibre link that will connect Indonesia with Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

The Indonesian service provider announced the start of construction work this week. The project launched in late 2025, when founding members Meta, SoftBank, IPS Inc., TM Technology Services (a unit of Telekom Malaysia), NEC and XLSmart agreed to jointly develop the system. Philippine operator Globe joined the consortium in April this year, taking roles as both investor and landing party.

NEC will supply the subsea transmission technology. According to the vendor's launch release, Candle will be one of the first cable systems in the Asia-Pacific region to use a 24-fibre pair cable, a design NEC says will help support strong demand for communications in the region.

The cable will land in Indonesia at Tanjung Bemban in Batam, according to Telecom Review Asia, giving the system an international connectivity point close to Singapore. Batam has also drawn investment in data centre and telecommunications infrastructure, which strengthens the case for the landing choice.

Commercially, Candle adds capacity to the dense web of subsea systems already connecting Southeast Asia with major digital markets in East Asia. The new route should give operators and hyperscalers more options for international traffic as demand for cloud, data centre and AI services grows.

XLSmart says the system will be commercially ready in 2028.