NTT Communications and Pacnet are vying to buy the assets of subsea cable operator Pacific Crossing.
Japanese telecom giant NTT Com and Hong Kong-based Pacnet have offered between $80 and $90 million for the company, the Financial Times reported.
Neither Pacific Crossing nor Pacnet would comment on the report.
The board of the Bermuda-based carrier is due to meet at the end of the week to consider the bids. The firm has about 20 owners, some of which are hedge funds who bought in at valuations above $400 million.
The sale is part of the sell-off of assets worldwide by hedge funds who bought in during the boom.
Pacific Crossing operates the PC-1 cable between Japan and Washington and California in the US - the second largest trans-Pacific cable after Tata's TGN system. The company bills it as the only independent, carrier neutral cable across the Pacific.
The cable was built by Global Crossing during the bandwidth boom in the late 1990s.