Vocus, Australia's specialist fibre and network solutions provider, has begun the rollout of the final $ 100 Million segment of its Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC) system. The DJSC system, a comprehensive network of cables connecting Darwin, Port Hedland, Perth, Christmas Island, Jakarta, and Singapore, will be completed with the installation of a new 1,000 km cable capable of carrying up to 40 Tbps of data. This $ 500 Million ecosystem of cables will transform Darwin into a significant data hub for the Asia-Pacific region.
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The new cable is designed to connect Vocus' current Australia Singapore Cable (ASC), that runs from Perth to Singapore via Christmas Island and Jakarta, and the North-West Cable System (NWCS), which runs between Darwin and Port Hedland.
The DJSC system will also interconnect with Project Horizon, Vocus' upcoming 2,000 km terrestrial fibre connection from Port Hedland to Perth. The interconnection between these systems will create a large new onshore/offshore network loop, providing improved resilience and redundancy.
The new cable segment will provide Darwin with its first direct international fibre link by mid-2023, providing ultrafast, low-latency bandwidth to Singapore and Jakarta.
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Latest Cable Technology
The four-fibre-pair cable receives energy from shore, has 14 active network repeaters to maintain signal strength, uses the latest dense wavelength division multiplexing fibre technology for future capacity upgrades, and has a submarine optical switch on the seabed. Optic Marine's cable-laying vessel Ile de Re, owned by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), is laying the cable.
Vocus said, "An innovative optical switch on the seabed will allow the network operation team to remotely balance and optimise the amount of optical wavelength available for different routes on the cable. This enhancement is an improvement on most previous cable systems, which were built with fixed optical allocation for each destination."
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Infrastructure Investment
Vocus is investing $1 billion over five years in infrastructure upgrades, including a new cable rollout and capacity upgrades to its existing network. The company's investment strategy also includes deploying significant new fibre infrastructure, such as the 2,000 km Project Horizon terrestrial fibre cable from Perth to Port Hedland in north-west Australia, which costs $ 150 million.
In addition to these upgrades, Vocus recently launched Vocus Satellite – Starlink in December. The company is offering advanced low earth orbit satellite (LEO) services to enterprise and government customers across Australia through an agreement.
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Vocus to Acquire Challenge Networks
Earlier this month, Vocus announced that it is acquiring Challenge Networks, its long-term partner and a leader in deploying private LTE and 5G networks worldwide.
