The new system, called Oman Australia Cable (OAC), will be the only express cable continental Australia and EMEA, delivering the first secure, diverse and low latency route between the two continents.
Designed as a three fibre pair system, OAC has th option to upgrade to four fibre pairs based on demand and will span approximately 9,700km with additional branching units designed to extend the system into Salalah, Oman and Djibouti sometime in the future.
“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,” said Bevan Slattery (pictured), founder of SUB.CO. “For me, the Oman Australia Cable 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.”
As illustrated in the route map OAC will not pass through the Sunda Strait or South China Sea, avoiding many of the issues experienced by other cable in the area. As such OAC will form part of a new “Great Southern Route” between continental US, Australia and EMEA.
The new express route comes in response to the growing investment being made in Perth in submarine cables and cloud hosting facilities. This year alone, three new submarine cable systems have been completed (ASC, Indigo West and Indigo Central) and two new major data centre facilities have also been commissioned (NEXTDC P2 and Equinix PE2).
“OAC will be highly complementary to the recent submarine cables between Perth and Singapore as well as Indigo Central, which will be used to extend OAC to Australia’s cloud capital, Sydney” added Slattery.
The decision to land the system in Oman was also driven by investment from cloud, network and data centre providers. Muscat in Oman has 15 submarine cables terminating today and will soon have a new Equinix facility being operated under joint venture between Equinix and Omantel.
“Speaking with customers and potential customers, 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. 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,” continued Slattery.
OAC will commence manufacturing later this year and is due to be completed by December 2021.
