Credit: Dreamstime
The Indigo Central subsea communications cable has landed in Coogee Beach, in Sydney, with installations to be completed in early December connecting Sydney and Perth.
In September, the first section of the Indigo subsea cable system – Indigo West – linking Australia and South East Asia was laid from Christmas Island to Floreat Beach in Perth, spanning 2400km.
The Indigo West and Central cables were designed to complement each other.
Construction of the overall Indigo cable system is on-track and will be ready for service by mid-2019, according to an announcement from the consortium responsible for the project.
Combined, Indigo West and Central have 9,200km of two-fibre pairs which will be able to support up to 36 terabits per 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.
In April 2017, AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra entered into an agreement with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build the international subsea cable system connecting Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.
Optus is the landing party for Indigo Central system in Sydney. The telco was responsible for building the front haul and also for the provision of operations and maintenance function for the land segment of the cable in Sydney.
On the same day, publicly-listed Superloop announced plans to acquire SubPartners in a US$2.5 million deal.
The completion of Indigo is a significant boost to Superloop's strategy in the Asia Pacific region to build international capacity and connectivity between its metropolitan networks, according to the company.
“We’re on a journey to interconnect and virtualise businesses across the Asia Pacific region, and the go-live of Indigo will accelerate that plan significantly," said Drew Kelton, CEO at Superloop.
Article updated at 15:30 on 31 October to include information on Optus being the landing party.
