The cable landing from the Cable Ship Reliance, is a significant step in delivering Australia's first express subsea cable to Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
“I am so excited, and somewhat relieved, to see OAC making landfall in Perth," said Bevan Slattery, founder of SUB.CO.
"This moment has been a long time in the making and made all the more challenging with Covid and for me personally represents another important piece of the puzzle to improve Australia’s digital resiliency.”
With over 95% of Australia’s international connectivity delivered by subsea cable, despite the fact that the number of cable systems have increased to provide additional capacity, they still tend to follow similar routes with the same single points of failure.
In response OAC will differ with the deployment of a diverse new cable route.
“Currently, every submarine cable that connects Europe/Middle East to Asia goes through a single 100 mile stretch of water in the Malacca Strait that is also one of the most earthquake prone, most fished, most active shipping areas in the world. It is the Suez Canal of the Cloud," added Slattery.
“Additionally, every cable out of the west of Australia all follow the same path and have the same single points of failure being they all travel through the Sunda Strait and land in Singapore. OAC will change all that.”
The Cable Ship Reliance will stay on site while the cable is extended through to the cable landing station and tested before moving on to continue installation.
The next phase will see the cable land into Cocos (Keeling) Islands in Q4 2021, making it the first cable to land in the remote Australian territory in almost 100 years.
“The SUB.CO team have been busy in the background completing construction of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands beach manhole and fronthaul networks with the containerised cable landing station about to be shipped to Island for commissioning in readiness for the arrival of the cable ship,” said Jim Clarke, CEO of SUB.CO.
The final phase will being after the Cocos (Keeling) Islands landing and continue installation to Oman with final splice due to be completed in Q1 2022 and the entire system due to go live in Q2 2022.
