Kevin Russell (Vocus Group CEO and managing director)
Vocus has drafted in a host of partners to begin laying 2,000km of cable down Western Australia, creating a “fibre backbone between” Perth and Port Hedland.
NBN partner Mirait Technologies Australia has been contracted to provide design and construction services for the cabling network labelled Project Horizon.
Indian digital network integrator STL, which won a contract to expand Vocus Group’s fibre network across Australia, has been tapped to provide optical fibre cables.
Vertiv will provide Controlled Environment Vaults (CEVs) housing telecommunications hardware along the route while Texas-headquartered Channell will provide rural and urban pits as well as joint enclosures.
Codecom, an Australian provider of fibre optic and structured cabling solutions, will also provide marker posts.
A tender process to select an optical network equipment supplier is due to be finalised later this month, completing the contractor line-up.
Forming the first part of Vocus’ $1 billion investment scheme, a five-year plan for its enterprise arm, Vocus Network Services (VNS), Project Horizon has already seen the fibre optic cable delivered and housed in Perth ready for deployment.
Project Horizon will interconnect in Port Hedland with Vocus’ second major infrastructure deployment, Project Highclere – a new 40Tbps submarine cable between Port Hedland and the Australia-Singapore cable.
“Vocus is undertaking the largest investment program in our company’s history, and Project Horizon is on schedule to begin deployment before the end of the year,” said Vocus CEO Kevin Russell.
“When complete, Project Horizon will establish a new 2,000km, 38 Terabit-per-second fibre route through Australia’s resources region, closing the final gap in our national fibre backbone connecting all mainland capitals. Horizon will also interconnect with two high-capacity submarine cables in Port Hedland – establishing Australia’s north as a new hub for domestic and international data.”
