New Aus-Singapore submarine cable underway

Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra have jointly announced that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to build a new international submarine cable, APX-West, connecting Perth and Singapore. 

The APX-West submarine cable is expected to begin construction by the end of July 2016 and is scheduled to be completed in 2018. Once completed, the new submarine cable will span more than 4500 km, carrying traffic between Australia and Singapore. 

The new cable will incorporate two fibre pairs providing two-way data transmission and each pair will have a minimum design capacity of 10 terabits per second. The cable will terminate in facilities operated by the consortium members in Singapore and Australia, significantly reducing costs and permitting times.

Bevan Slattery, SubPartners founder and CEO, said, “The MOU is a major milestone for the project, with the foundation parties including Singtel, SubPartners and Telstra committing to purchase the entire available capacity on the system. 

"The APX-West system is a consortium cable with all the major players having access to ownership economics at a fraction of the cost of private cable ownership. This is a unique commercial model for the Perth-Singapore route that will satisfy the ongoing bandwidth requirements of both network operators and internet content hosts.”

Ooi Seng Keat, vice president, carrier services, group enterprise at Singtel, said, “The current data bridge between Singapore and Perth is carried by the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable. The APX-West cable will be a new data superhighway to expand data connectivity and capacity between Singapore and Australia, providing network redundancy and the lowest latency from Australia to South-East Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Today, Singtel has one of the most extensive submarine cable infrastructures in the Asia-Pacific region. With these capabilities, the Singtel Group, including Optus, can meet customers’ growing data requirements for bandwidth-intensive applications such as unified communications, enterprise data exchange, internet TV and online gaming.”

Darrin Webb, Telstra’s executive director international operations and services, said, “The MOU is a significant step forward in building what would be a valuable addition to Telstra’s subsea network, which is one of the largest in the Asia-Pacific. As consumers and businesses continue to embrace online products and services, such as video streaming and cloud, the demand for international connectivity continues to rise, creating a strong case for building this new cable.”