Consortium breaks milestone on 9,200km international fibre cable project

The consortium behind an ambitious construction of 9,200km worth of undersea fibre network between Perth and Singapore has today reached its first major milestone.

Earlier this year, SubPartners, AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel and Telstra joined forces on the INDIGO project, a subsea cable network which has today celebrated the completion of its first section of cable.

The newly minted cable extends 2,400km between Christmas Island and Perth, providing a launch point for the second section of INDIGO cable which will begin construction between Singapore and Indonesia later this month.

INDIGO's goal is to strengthen ties between Australia and South East Asia and create the fastest network speeds between the two regions.

As one of the members of the consortium, SubPartners is the telecom infrastructure subsidiary of Superloop, a digital services provider founded by Brisbane-based serial entrepreneur Bevan Slattery.

Drew Kelton, the current CEO of Superloop, says the completion of INDIGO's first section of cable brings the company one step closer to developing and expanding its global capacity

"We are starting to see the benefits of our investment in infrastructure and software," says Kelton.

"The three key principles behind Superloop of fibre, wireless and Asia have never looked more compelling, relevant and timely."

The INDIGO cable system is expected to be completed by mid-2019 and once completed it will support initial capacity of at least 4.5 terabits per seconds, which can be increased as technological advancements are made.

INDIGO will also allow each of the consortium members to independently take advantage of these future upgrades and capacity increases.

At the time of writing (3:39pm AEST), shares in Superloop are trading down a slight 2.98 per cent at $2.28.

Business News Australia