SubPartners signs Indonesia MoU
As the race to build out a Perth to Singapore subsea cable continues between SubPartners, Leighton and Trident, SubPartners has moved to the next stage, signing a memorandum of understanding with PT Indosat to negotiate access through Jakarta, Indonesia.
Under the agreement, Indosat will help build a branch connection for SubPartners' APX-West subsea cable that will land at Indosat's landing station in Jakarta. Indosat will help gain permits for APX-West with Indonesia, as part of the agreement.
The APX-West cable will be 4,600km long, with 4 fibre pairs, 55 repeaters, between 48 and 60 wavelengths per pair and 100Gbps capacity per wavelength. The current timetable plans for the cable to go live in early 2015.
The cable construction is running up against a similar cable being built by Leighton Contractors, and another one being built by Trident. The CEO of Trident, Mark de Kock, told ZDNet in August that the company believed it had the edge over Leighton and SubPartners because it had secured its Jakarta landing early on.
"The biggest challenge in laying a cable that goes from Australia to Singapore is traditionally getting the Indonesian landing site and approval and permits to pass through Indonesian territorial waters. That particular problem we've already addressed by purchasing two fibre pairs on Matrix Networks," he said at the time.
SubPartners CEO Bevan Slattery said today that the agreement sees the APX-West cable pass a major hurdle.
"Crossing Indonesian waters presented SubPartners with two key opportunities, one, to improve regional diversity with an additional landing to Jakarta, and two, to secure a major carrier-grade partner in one of the fastest growing markets in the world," he said in a statement.
"I can wholeheartedly say that our partnership with Indosat thoroughly exceeds any expectations I had and I look forward to working with the Indosat team on APX-West"
At the beginning of this month, Australia's third-largest ISP iiNet announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with SubPartners to acquire one quarter of the available optical light spectrum on a fibre pair. This is expected to provide an estimated 2Tbps of capacity using current technology when activated.