news Australia’s international internet capacity is in for a significant increase with the planned development of a new optic fibre submarine cable system, ASSC-1, between Perth and Singapore.

Private Australian submarine cable developer ASSC-1 Communication Group (ASSC-1) yesterday announced plans to deploy a four-fibre pair cable system to link the two cities. The new system will have an initial design capacity of 6.4 terabits per second (TBps), to be delivered through 40 gigabits per second (GBps) technology, which could be upgraded to 100 GBps in the future.

The new cable will be supplied and installed for ASSC-1 by Huawei Marine Networks, a joint venture between Huawei Technologies and Global Marine Systems. The system will comprise three express fibre pairs between Perth and Singapore, and one omnibus fibre pair between Perth, Jakarta and Singapore. Telstra, the first international carrier to commit to the new cable, has agreed to purchase one of the four fibre pairs and to provide landing party services in Perth. The Jakarta landing will be supplied by Matrix Cable System (Matrix) through their own cable landing station and Matrix will also work with ASSC-1 to manage the Indonesian permit process.

ASSC-1 is geared towards the exponential growth of data and internet traffic between Australia and the rest of the world, particularly in the Asian region. The cable utilises the latest optic fibre and system delivery technology and is designed to increase the capacity and speed of data transfers dramatically. It will span a distance of 4,600 kilometres, with construction set to begin in the first quarter of 2012 and expected to be completed in 2013.

ASSC-1 Chief Executive Officer James Chen said that ASSC-1 is a low latency system that will provide the fastest transfer speed between Australia, Asia and Europe. “ASSC-1 will dramatically increase the capacity for internet and data traffic between Australia, particularly the west coast, Asia and Europe, and we expect it to take up excess demand from the only existing cable on this route, which is the ageing SEAMEWE3 system. In addition we expect to provide increased diversity for traffic from Asia to the US via Australia,” he said.

ASSC-1 is a carrier-neutral cable system that will meet domestic and international carriage demands by providing access to its partners and customers, including Tier 1 Carriers, ISPs and secondary service providers.

Jim Clarke, Senior Vice President of Global Carrier Sales, Telstra International expressed his pleasure at the collaboration with ASSC-1. “With this infrastructure in place, businesses and individual users will benefit with better and faster support for their network needs as well as much needed diversity out of the west coast of Australia,” he said.

Image credit: Clix, royalty free

Related posts:

1. NZ group pledges new AU/NZ/USA fibre cable
2. Pacnet joins NZ Pacific Fibre consortium
3. Telstra 100Mbps HFC cable goes national
4. Four more cities get Telstra 30Mbps cable
5. Telstra slashes 200GB HFC cable plan by $20

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1. NightKhaos
   Posted 21/01/2012 at 4:12 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Omom nom nom. More international bandwidth can only be a good thing, right? :)

   • Adam
     Posted 21/01/2012 at 6:14 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Maybe now Microsoft can host office 365 in signapore for australians, because currently it is hosted at Telstra and is too expensive.

     • Martin Eddy
       Posted 21/01/2012 at 7:27 pm | Permalink | Reply

       I think you’ll find that it’s already hosted in Singapore it’s just that Telstra are the Australian reseller.

       • Michael Wyres
         Posted 21/01/2012 at 7:58 pm | Permalink | Reply

         Correct.

         Telstra are the only current supplier in AU, and they are going to host it in their own DCs. Microsoft are NOT going to open up the service into Australia from Singapore in competition with their own relationship with Telstra.

         However, I do know of a couple of companies that are looking at 365 deployments, but giving the complexity of the solution, even if someone committed to doing it tomorrow, it would still be a way off.

2. Phil Collins
   Posted 23/01/2012 at 10:07 am | Permalink | Reply

   Something odd with this one. No site survey, no telco experience. Murky finance. What gives?

3. Winston
   Posted 13/02/2012 at 2:43 am | Permalink | Reply

   Sounds good. The price of capacity between Australia and Singapore is too expensive.