Stage 1 of 28Tbps Trident subsea cable to go live in April

Trident Subsea Cable has signed an agreement with Indonesian submarine cable company Triasmitra to own and operate a two-pair fibre-optic, 1,070-kilometre subsea and terrestrial cable system connecting Singapore with Indonesia, which it said will be running by April 2017.

The telecommunications cable linking Singapore and Jakarta is Stage 1 of the larger independent carrier-neutral Trident Subsea Cable system between Australia and Asia, and will make use of Triasmitra's existing Jakarta-Bangka-Batam-Singapore (B2JS) cable system.

Trident also said that it has already secured capacity sales of more than $20 million for its Stage 1 route thanks to the demand for higher-speed connectivity.

"Trident welcomes this exciting collaboration with Triasmitra; Triasmitra has a proven track record in submarine and terrestrial fibre-optic cable network infrastructure development and maintenance," Trident CEO Alexis Pinto said.

"With a number of domestic and international assets within Indonesia and surrounding regions, a skilled engineering workforce, and close relationships with international carrier partners, Triasmitra brings significant value to Trident's Asia network."

Pinto added that using Triasmitra's network will accelerate the establishment of the overall project.

Points of presence (PoPs) will be housed within datacentres in Singapore and Indonesia with "international collocation partners", Trident said on Tuesday. Trident announced in July that it had chosen Equinix's International Business Exchange (IBX) datacentres in Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, and Jakarta for its Asia-Pacific submarine cable's PoPs.

The submarine cable will have a bandwidth of 28 Terabits per second, utilising 100Gbps coherent dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) technology, which is upgradeable to 400Gbps, and will connect the west coast of Australia with Singapore via Indonesia.

The cable is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2018.

Trident Subsea Cable signed a AU$320 million commitment in July 2013 to construct a AU$400 million Perth-to-Singapore subsea cable, backed by Beijing Construction and Engineering Group with the support of the China Development Bank.

The cable will stretch from Perth, Western Australia, through to the Pilbara region to Jakarta in Indonesia, and up to Singapore, and is targeted at governments as well as the mining, oil, and gas industries.

The Trident Subsea Cable is one of three subsea cables currently being built between Australia and Singapore, alongside SubPartners' APX-West cable and Vocus Communications' Australia Singapore Cable (ASC).

APX-West will be 4,500km long, with two fibre pairs providing a minimum of 10Tbps capacity per pair and two-way data transmission. Telstra, SubPartners, and Singtel in March announced entering a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to construct the high-capacity Perth to Singapore subsea cable, with completion expected by 2018.

Originally a 50-50 joint-venture deal between Vocus and Nextgen Networks, the ASC project involves constructing a 4,600km subsea cable connecting Perth to Singapore and Indonesia.

The cable is expected to be used for at least 25 years, with completion of the cable set for August 2018 at a cost of $170 million. A deal signed between Vocus and Nextgen Networks in November last year pinned the cost at around $120 million.

Vocus subsequently purchased Nextgen Networks for AU$700 million in June, with Vocus and Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks earlier this month signing an agreement to build the ASC, which is designed to carry 40Tbps at a minimum.

All three cables are aimed at replacing the slower-speed SEA-ME-WE 3 (SMW3) cable, which currently carries data traffic between Australia and Singapore.