Japanese officials are set to offer subsidies to NEC, one of the country's biggest tech companies, to purchase cable-laying ships capable of traversing oceans. According to the Financial Times, Tokyo is willing to cover as much as half of the acquisition cost of these vessels. With each ship estimated to cost around $300 million, Japan is seemingly ready to spend half a billion dollars or more to allow NEC to have unfettered access to its own cable-laying vessels, a matter the government now considers of vital importance to national security.
NEC is one of the largest layers of undersea cables and the biggest one in Asia, having already installed over 400,000 km globally. It currently competes with US-based SubCom, the French government-owned Alcatel Submarine Networks, and China’s HMN Tech. All of these companies have their own fleets, with each of them owning between two and seven vessels. On the other hand, NEC does not own any cable-laying ships and instead leases them from other operators.
