The Oman Australia Cable (OAC), which will span 9,800 km between Muscat and Perth, hit another significant milestone in its construction with SUB.Co confirming that the fiber has now been fully manufactured. Load #1 of 2 is now being loaded onto a freighter to transfer to the main-lay ship for installation beginning in March 2021.
Final splice for the OAC is on target for December 2021. Once completed, OAC will be the only submarine cable directly connecting continental Australia and EMEA, providing the first secure, diverse, express and lowest latency route between the two continents.
OAC is designed with 4 fiber pairs and a total system capacity of 54 Tbps.
Bevan Slattery, founder of SUB.CO said, “2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging year to commit to building a cable of this scale, but I am delighted that we have achieved 100% of cable production and completed the first load system assembly testing within the original product schedule. This could not have been done without the assistance of our fantastic partners: SubCom.”
David Coughlan, CEO of SubCom noted, “We knew that this was going to be a task when we committed to the program back in February 2020, but we also knew we would be up for the challenge. Despite everything that has been thrown at us, our team has done an exceptional job to keep this project going, on time, on budget and most importantly, safely.”
