Vocus Telecommunications has confirmed that its Australia Singapore Cable will be completed ahead of schedule.
The project had an original completion date of September 2018, but the company said today it would be able to go live by July 2018.
“We’ve been able to achieve the earlier date through condensing the programme of works to deliver ahead of schedule, in July 2018,” Vocus chief executive Geoff Horth said.
“The Vocus and Alcatel build teams are familiar with each other, having worked together on the successful delivery of our North West Cable System, which has facilitated the shorter timeframe for completion.”
{loadposition sam08}The cable will also add a landing on Christmas Island, after expressions of interest from many government agencies.
The company said Christmas Island was a location that had struggled to secure required infrastructure to support local service requirements.
The 4600-km cable will link Australia to Singapore and Indonesia.
The system design is to provide a minimum of 40Tbps capacity from Western Australia to south-east Asia, and this could be increased.
The project will cost US$170 million in the build period.
A report on the project, commissioned earlier this year, by telecom data market expert TeleGeography estimated that there would be more than 50Tbps bandwidth demand between Australia and Asia by 2029.
The report also estimated that the cable could capture a minimum of 15.5Tbps of capacity sales by year-end 2029, resulting in expected revenue of at least US$550 million over this period.
TeleGeography estimated that by 2019, 30% of Australia’s overall international bandwidth would be connected to Asia.
“The ASC establishes a new global route from South East Asia – the Great Southern Route,” said Horth.
He added that it would avoid "geographic instability around Japan and geopolitical challenges in Guam and the South China Sea, to provide a safer route to the US thus opening up the cable to new markets".