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Subsea fibre cable infrastructure group SUB.CO is set to build the Oman Australia Cable (OAC), a new system directly connecting Muscat, Oman with Perth which will ultimately give Australia closer links and a lower latency route to Europe.
The company founded by Bevan Slattery is the only group currently building a cable of this kind connecting the two regions, and comes hot on the heels of the INDIGO project connecting Singapore to Perth.
Slattery also founded SubPartners, a key player in the INDIGO consortium which was acquired by another of his companies Superloop (ASX: SLC) in 2017.
SUB.CO says because the cable will not be passing through the Sunda Strait or the South China Sea it will avoid issues being experienced by similar systems in those areas.
Slattery says he is proud to build the system, dubbed a new 'Great Southern Route' between continental US, Australia and EMEA.
"I am delighted to be building a new, express route providing diversity and low latency between Australia and EMEA, while at the same time avoiding some of the challenges associated with building through the shallows of the Sunda Strait and busy South China Sea," says Slattery.
"For me, the OAC is the final piece of an important puzzle to improve Australia's resiliency and recognises the growing importance of Oman in becoming the new "Cloud Hub" in EMEA."
Like Oman, Perth is becoming a central hub for connectivity in Australia.
In the past year, the WA capital has seen three new submarine cables connected at Perth, and two new major data centre facilities commissioned.
Both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services have established Cloud onramps in Perth for regional availability zones and others are expected to be announced soon according to SUB.CO.
As for why Oman was selected as the endpoint for the OAC, Slattery points to the significant investment made in the country from major cloud, network and data centre providers in the region made of late.
Muscat has 15 submarine cables terminating today and will soon have a new Equinix facility being operated under a joint venture between Equinix and Omantel.
"It has become apparent the industry has selected Oman as the key hub for EMEA and the gateway between Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa," says SUB.CO.
"Having visibility to the upcoming investment by major cloud providers in the region is only going to further enhance Oman's position for the foreseeable future."
OAC is expected to be completed by December 2021.
The cable, which uses optical technology, can support up to 36 terabits per second; the equivalent of simultaneously streaming millions of movies a second.
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