The 4,600 km Australia-Singapore Submarine Cable (ASSC) will be developed and held privately by ASSC-1 Communications Group. Construction of the carrier neutral cable system will begin in Q2 2012 and the cable is expected to be completed in 2013.
ASSC-1 will consist of four fibre pairs, with an initial design capacity of 6.4Tbps. The cable will use 40Gbps technology which can be upgraded to 100Gbps in the future, in order to satisfy future market requirements.
The only other cable currently linking the west coast of Australia is the SeaMeWe-3 cable, which was ready for service in 1999. James Chen, CEO of ASSC-1, describes SeaMeWe-3 as “ageing”.
Chen claims that the new ASSC-1 system will provide the fastest transfer speeds between Australia, Asia and Europe.
“ASSC-1 will dramatically increase the capacity for internet and data traffic between Australia, particularly the west coast, Asia and Europe,” said Chen. He also hopes that the cable will provide increased diversity for traffic from Asia to the US via Australia.
Telstra has already agreed to purchase one of the fibre pairs and will also provide landing party services in Perth.
Huawei Marine Technologies will supply and install the ASSC-1 system, while Matrix Cable Systems will supply the Jakarta landing through their own cable landing station.
