The Belau Submarine Cable Corporation (BSCC) and NEC Corporation (NEC) announced the completion of a new submarine cable that will connect the Republic of Palau to Guam and onward connectivity to Asia, North America and the rest of the world. A press release said that the Palau Spur will interconnect with the existing SEA-US submarine cable—which connects the Philippines and Indonesia to the west coast of the U.S. via Guam and Hawaii—from a branching unit located between the Philippines and Guam. The Palau Spur has an initial design capacity of 500 Gbps. NEC is supplying some 200 km of cable for the project, including a pre-lay shore end of about 7 km. "Yesterday, this island nation was still dependent on satellite communications, but from today, this new cable will bring information at the speed of light, improving the quality of life for those living in and traveling to Palau," said Toru Kawauchi, general manager of NEC’s Submarine Network Division." Palau, an archipelago of over 500 islands that is part of the Micronesia region in the western Pacific Ocean, has a population of about 21,700 people.