A consortium comprising AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra have marked a milestone in the implementation of the INDIGO subsea cable system with the landing of the INDIGO West cable at Floreat Beach in Perth.
This marks the completion of work to lay the first section of cable across approximately 2400km from Christmas Island to Perth.
Work to lay the second section of the INDIGO West cable between Singapore and Indonesia will start this month and is expected to be completed by the end of December 2018.
This milestone follows the announcement in April 2017 that the consortium had entered into an agreement with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build the INDIGO cable system connecting Singapore, Perth and Sydney, with two additional fibre pairs connecting Singapore and Jakarta via a branching unit.
The ASN cable ship, the Ile de Brehat, will continue laying the INDIGO Central cable another 4600kms from Perth to Sydney. Construction of the INDIGO cable system is on-track to be completed and ready for service by mid-2019.
The 9,200km INDIGO cable system will strengthen links between Australia and the South East Asian markets, providing lower latency and enhanced reliability. Using today’s coherent optical technology, the cable’s two-fibre pairs will be able to support up to 36 terabits per second, the equivalent of simultaneously streaming millions of movies a second.
The INDIGO cable system will utilise new spectrum sharing technology so each consortium member will have the ability to independently take advantage of technology advancements for future upgrades and capacity increases on demand.