Australian subsea start-up to build transpacific cable

A NEW $700m subsea optical cable system linking Australia, Asia and the United States will land in Darwin – bringing with it infrastructure and jobs.

Melbourne telecommunications infrastructure company Inligo Networks has finalised negotiations with the Territory Government to land the cable here.

Although a landing site has not yet been finalised, it is expected to be between Darwin High School and the Darwin Ski Club.

The Asia Connect Cable (ACC-1) System will link Singapore, Indonesia, Timor Leste, Australia and the west coast of the United States via Guam, with connections in Japan.

As part of Inligo Network’s plan to provide low latency, high-capacity digital connectivity for Darwin, the company will build a new $200m terrestrial cable linking Darwin to Adelaide.

It will deliver onward seamless connections to Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney providing the high speed, high-capacity connectivity needed to support the development of additional data centre investments in Darwin.

The capacity to provide new low latency, high capacity services directly between Australia and the US will position Darwin as the major telecommunications hub between Australia, Indonesia and Singapore, surpassing longer and less direct routes via Perth.

With 16 fibre pairs capacity and running the latest optical technology, ACC-1 will be one of the highest capacity commercial subsea fibre projects in the region.

The network design has been completed and landing partners agreed, and Inligo Networks is due to commence construction in the first half of this year. Subtel Forum