Indigo subsea cable made ready for use

The consortium of companies behind the Indigo subsea cable -- Telstra, SubPartners, Google, Singtel, AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, and Alcatel Submarine Networks -- have announced that the 36Tbps connection between Australia to Singapore is ready for use.

The cable was first announced in April 2017, with Alcatel having signed up to construct the cable during the same month.

Indigo consists of two parts, a western 4,600km link between Perth and Singapore, and its central 4,600km link between Perth and Sydney that is claimed to be Australia's first transcontinental fibre optic submarine cable. A branch also provides connectivity to Jakarta.

In November it was announced the cable would land in NextDC's Perth and Sydney data centres.

"We are looking forward to lighting up Indigo," AARNet CEO Chris Hancock said.

"This cable system is providing critical underpinning infrastructure to support the future growth in collaborative data-intensive research and transnational education."

The consortium touted the cable's spectrum sharing technology as allowing each member to "independently leverage the new cable system to upgrade their networks and enable capacity increases on demand".

Subsea cables across the globe

• Vocus' Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC)
• Vocus' North West Cable System (NWCS) between Darwin and Port Hedland, and the new Tiwi Islands spur being added
• The Australian government's Coral Sea subsea cable, being constructed by Vocus to connect Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands and funded through the foreign aid budget
• Google's Dunant transatlantic subsea cable between Virginia Beach in the United States to the French Atlantic coast
• The Indigo subsea cable system being built by Telstra, SubPartners, Google, Singtel, AARNet, Indosat Ooredoo, and Alcatel Submarine Networks, connecting Sydney, Perth, Singapore, and Jakarta
• The Indian government's Chennai-Andaman and Nicobar islands subsea cable, being built by NEC
• Southern Cross Cables' NEXT subsea cable system between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, being built by SubPartners
• The Trident subsea cable system connecting Perth with Singapore via Indonesia
• The Jupiter subsea cable connecting the US, Japan, and the Philippines and being built by a consortium including Facebook, Amazon, SoftBank, NTT Com, PLDT, and PCCW
• The Hawaiki subsea cable between Australia, New Zealand, and the US
• Superloop's Hong Kong cable
• Telstra's Hong Kong Americas (HKA) cable between Hong Kong and the US
• The Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) between Hong Kong and the US
• Google's Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable system, and the extension to JGA-South that Australia's Sunshine Coast Council is building
• The Asia-Pacific Gateway (APG) subsea cable connecting China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore, owned by a consortium including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Mobile, NTT Communications, KT Corporation, LG Uplus, StarHub, Chunghwa Telecom, CAT, Global Transit Communications, Viettel, and VNPT, and being constructed by NEC
• The Southeast Asia Japan 2 cable (SJC2), which will have 11 landing stations in Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, being built by NEC and funded by a consortium including China Mobile International, Chunghwa Telecom, Chuan Wei, Facebook, KDDI, Singtel, SK Broadband, and VNPT
• The Bay to Bay Express Cable System (BtoBE), connecting Singapore and Hong Kong with the US, being funded by consortium including Facebook, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and China Mobile International, and being built by NEC
• The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) connecting Angola and Brazil, going live in October 2018 after being built by NEC
• The PNG subsea cable network being built by Huawei