Vocus unveiled plans for the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC), the first international submarine cable connection into Darwin, establishing the Northern Territory capital as Australia’s newest entry point for international data connectivity.
Vocus has now signed construction contracts for a new $100 million, 1,000km cable linking the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) to the North West Cable System (NWCS) in Port Hedland – providing the final piece of the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC), a $500 million system of high-capacity cables connecting Perth, Darwin, Port Hedland, Christmas Island, Indonesia, and Singapore.
The DJSC will deliver 40Tbps of internet capacity between Australia and Asia – unlocking Darwin as a major new data hub for the Asia-Pacific and opening up the Pilbara mining region for low-latency connectivity into Singapore.
The DJSC has been years in planning and marks the final stage in a sequence of major infrastructure builds by Vocus in Australia’s North and West. The DJSC will interconnect with the 4,600km ASC between Perth and Singapore and the 2,100km NWCS between Port Hedland and Darwin, with the completed system expected to be online by mid-2023.
Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher MP said: “Submarine cables are vital infrastructure, connecting Australia to the rest of the world. This new international cable landing in Darwin will provide more capacity and additional redundancy for Australia, and I welcome this investment from Vocus.”
The announcement coincides with the completion of the ‘Terabit Territory’ project with the Northern Territory Government, which has seen Vocus deploy 200 Gbps (Gigabits per second, per wavelength) technology on its domestic fibre network into Darwin. Vocus’ Darwin fibre routes now have 20Tbps of capacity, scalable to deliver up to 480Tbps of total capacity – with a future upgrade path in place to deliver 400Gbps technology as it becomes commercially available.
https://www.vocus.com.au/news/vocus-announces-the-darwin-cable
