SUBCO announced Australia’s first express undersea cable, the Oman Australia Cable (OAC) has made landfall in Perth, Australia and is now ready for service.

Founder, Bevan Slattery first proposed the project in 2019, and it had a route from Perth to Oman from July 2021 to April 2022.

SUB.CO has a cross-connect to the Indigo cable system, which provides a connection from Australia to Europe and the United States.

The new cable connects Australia to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and it is expected to provide the shortest latency path and uses optical technology supporting up to 36 terabits per second which is the equivalent of simultaneously streaming millions of movies a second.

“Massive thank you to the entire team at Subco especially Lee, Carlos and Celia who have been there since day 1 on this journey and Jason and Tom who have played a major role in getting the network up. One more month of testing and we pass commercial traffic!!,” says Slattery.

Currently, over 95% of Australia’s international connectivity is provided by undersea cables, and while the number of cables has increased to provide additional capacity, they often follow similar routes and are vulnerable to the same single points of failure.

According to Slattery, submarine cables that link Europe/the Middle East with Asia all pass through a single 100-mile stretch of water in the Malacca Strait, one of the world’s most heavily fished, most active shipping areas.

“All cables originating from western Australia follow the same route and have the same single point of failure, which is that they all pass through the Sunda Strait and end up in Singapore. OAC will alter that situation.” adds Slattery.

Slattery said in 2021, when the cable first landed in Perth, currently all subsea cables that connect Europe/the Middle East to Asia go through a single 100-mile stretch of water in the Malacca Strait, which is one of the world’s most active fishing, most seismically active, and most heavily trafficked shipping routes.

“Cables originating in Western Australia all route through the Sunda Strait to Singapore, he said.”

“Because the Oman-Australia cable avoids the Sunda and Malacca Straits, it should also avoid having multiple cables knocked out at those locations.”

Slattery announced the go-live on LinkedIn.