Indigo subsea cables’ installation completed

The installations of Indigo Central and West subsea fibre optic cables were completed in December, resulting in a complete optical path between landing stations.

Indigo Central, which connects Sydney to Perth was completed in 24 December, only three days after Indigo West, which connects Singapore to Sydney, was completed on 21 December.

According to an announcement from Superloop, the cable now enters a period of acceptance and commissioning testing before going live and providing commercial service.

"This has been a tremendous project and Indigo will become an important piece of infrastructure for Australia and the region not just for its diversity and additional resiliency, but because it provides greater competition for the Australian connectivity market." Superloop CEO Drew Kelton said.

The Indigo West and Central cables were designed to complement each other and are expected to go live in early 2019.

Combined, Indigo West and Central have 9,200km of two-fibre pairs which will be able to support up to 36 terabits per second.

In April 2017, AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra entered into an agreement with Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build the international subsea cable system connecting Singapore, Indonesia and Australia.

On the same day, publicly-listed Superloop announced plans to acquire SubPartners in a US$2.5 million deal.

SubPartners co-founder and Superloop director Bevan Slattery said the project has run on time and on budget.

In November, NextDC signed a deal with Superloop for access to the new Indigo subsea cable system for both of its Perth (P1 and P2) and Sydney (S1 and S2) data centres.

Superloop will supply NextDC with optical layer connectivity to Indigo, expecting it will be 'ready for service' in the second half of 2019 financial year, providing speeds exceeding 36 terabits per seconds.