SUB.CO completes final splice for OAC system

“I am both excited and somewhat relieved to have achieved final splice on OAC and to see for the first-time light travel along the entire continuous optical path all the way between Oman and Australia. Such a great achievement and major milestone toward a more resilient internet,” said Bevan Slattery, founder of SUB.CO.

Announced in 2019, OAC is Australia’s first express subsea cable to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and creating a pathway of diverse connectivity from Australia to Oman, Europe and onwards.

"Today too much of our internet traffic is concentrated travelling through routes that represent massive single points of failure, in shallow waters in the world's most heavily fished and busiest shipping channels of the Malacca Strait and the Andaman and South China Seas. The Oman Australia Cable provides a completely diverse, deep-ocean express route between our two continents,” added Slattery.

The 9,800km system has been manufactured and installed by SubCom, and has landing points in Perth, Australia; West Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands; and Muscat, Oman.

It is a three-fibre pair system and according to Submarine Cable Networks, the cable will also boast a design that features 100G DWDM and a total capacity of 39Tbps.

“More data is flowing across the world than ever before. It’s overdue that Australia had a fast, secure connection to Europe, the Middle East and Africa," added Slattery.

"This is an important piece of the puzzle to improve Australian and international digital resiliency and we are excited to be just months away from delivering our first services to customers.”

Final testing and commissioning of OAC is currently underway with the system expected to become ready for service in September 2022.