The INDIGO cable consortium has announced the landing of the INDIGO West subsea cable in Perth, Australia, marking completion of the first section of the deployment.
INDIGO consortium members AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra contracted Alcatel Submarine Networks to build the cable system in April 2017.
The 9,200km INDIGO cable system is scheduled to be operational by mid next year. It will link Perth and Sydney in Australia with Singapore, with two additional fiber pairs connecting Singapore and Jakarta in Indonesia via a branching unit. This two fiber pair configuration will be able to support capacity of up to 36Tbps.
ASN's cable laying ship now plans to move on to laying the INDIGO Central component between Perth and Sydney.
“The INDIGO submarine cable will usher in a new era of high speed communications between the growing economies of Southeast Asia and Australia,” Singtel VP of carrier services group enterprise Ooi Seng Keat said in a statement.
“This new data superhighway will complement our existing global links to Asia, US, Europe, Australia and the Middle East and allow Singtel and [Australian subsidiary] Optus to meet the growing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications as well as boost network diversity and resilience.”
Telstra head of North Asia and global wholesale Paul Abfalter added that the cable will connect to the operator's extensive terrestrial infrastructure for onward connectivity in Australia.
“Our vast subsea network is a key part of our international growth strategy and we will continue to invest in additional capacity to meet the increasing demand for data and maintain our network leadership in the Asia-Pacific region.” he said.