This article was authored by Dylan Bushell-Embling, and was originally posted on telecomasia.net.
The consortium behind the INDIGO Central subsea cable has announced its landing in Sydney, Australia.
Once complete, INDIGO Central will be the first subsea cable directly connecting Sydney on the east coast of the nation with Perth on the west coast.
The cable is on track to be fully installed in early December. It will be designed to complement the connecting INDIGO West cable connecting Singapore with Perth.
The INDIGO project is being funded by a consortium consisting of Singtel – parent company of Australian operator Optus – Optus rival Telstra, the Australian academic and research network (AARNet), Indonesia’s Indosat, telecoms infrastructure company SubPartners, and Google.
The overall INDIGO system is expected to be ready for service in mid-2019. The 36Tbps, two fiber pair cable system will span 9,200km, and be the first direct connection between Sydney and Singapore.
“The landing of INDIGO Central cable by Optus is a landmark development which will boost Australia’s communications ecosystem with much-needed high-speed capacity and network diversity,” Singtel VP of carrier services for group enterprise Ooi Seg Keat said.
“Together with INDIGO West, the next-generation INDIGO Central data superhighway will enhance Singtel and Optus’ subsea networks, creating a cable ring connecting Australia to Singapore, through Southeast Asia, across the Pacific and back to Australia.”
If you haven't already, please take our Reader Survey! Just 3 questions to help us better understand who is reading Telecom Ramblings so we can serve you better!
Categories: Other Posts · Undersea cables
Join Our LinkedIn Group
They have roads an such that go across the continent. Why go by sea instead of by land?
Reliability, usually. Also it simplifies the hardware deployment for those consuming a whole fibre that you don’t need to interface two types of layer 1 equipment.
There is also only one main road between Perth and South Australia and one rail line – which are diverse from each other, but there are long stretches which are hard to access and may take days to reach.
If it takes days to reach them, it probably isn’t going to go out all that often due to the actions of man. 😉
It just seems much cheaper to have much more capacity when going by land instead of by sea, given that you can deploy more than a dozen strands cost effectively.