Vocus has restored some direct telecommunications capacity between Australia and Singapore as it works to contain the impact of the damaged Australia-Singapore Cable.

The carrier has now established an additional path between Perth and Singapore via Jakarta, allowing affected Layer 2 Ethernet services between Australia and Singapore to be temporarily restored

The development provides some relief following the Australia-Singapore Cable failure first reported on September 4, which removed a major direct route between Western Australia and Singapore and contributed to Australian traffic being diverted through significantly longer international paths.

Vocus is also adding capacity between Guam and Japan in an attempt to strengthen internet connectivity into Asia while the ASC remains unavailable.

Network equipment required for the new route has arrived in Guam, with Vocus expecting the additional capacity to be brought online within 24 to 48 hours through work with its international network partners.

The additional routes are important because internet traffic has continued to use alternate international paths during the outage, leaving some Australian users with considerably higher latency when connecting to services hosted in Singapore, other parts of Asia and Europe.

Tech Business News previously reported testing showing Melbourne-to-Singapore traffic travelling through Sydney, San Jose in California, Tokyo and Hong Kong before eventually arriving in Singapore.

That route produced sustained round-trip latency of between 258ms and 350ms, with peaks exceeding 400ms, despite Singapore ordinarily being one of Australia’s closest major international hosting and connectivity hubs.

The route observed during that testing was:

Melbourne → Sydney → San Jose → Tokyo → Hong Kong → Singapore

The latest Vocus restoration work should provide additional capacity and reduce pressure on those contingency routes, although the company has warned customers that increased latency may continue while internet traffic remains diverted.

Physical cable remains broken

While services are gradually being restored through alternative capacity, the physical Australia-Singapore Cable has not yet been repaired.

Vocus said permanently restoring the cable remains its highest priority, but the operation depends on regulatory approvals and the mobilisation of specialist marine repair resources.

The carrier is working with its marine repair partner to secure Indonesian permits and other regulatory approvals, confirm the necessary repair materials and equipment, and finalise the repair procedure.

Mobilisation arrangements for the repair operation are also still being developed.

Vocus expects to have greater clarity on the permanent repair timetable within the next seven days.

The fault has previously been located in Indonesian waters between Anyer and Singapore following testing from the Perth cable landing station.

The cable stretches approximately 4,600 kilometres between Perth and Singapore, with connections through Christmas Island and Indonesia, and has been operating since 2018.

Australia remains exposed to reduced Singapore capacity

The ASC failure has had a greater impact because another major Perth-to-Singapore system, Indigo West, has also been experiencing an outage.

The simultaneous problems have reduced the amount of direct low-latency capacity available between Australia and Southeast Asia and forced telecommunications providers to rely more heavily on alternative international routes.

For most Australians, the faults do not mean the domestic internet is unavailable. Australian websites, local streaming services and traffic delivered from domestic content delivery networks can continue operating normally.

The impact becomes much more apparent when Australians connect to infrastructure in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia.

Higher latency can affect cloud applications, corporate VPN connections, online gaming, remote desktop sessions, website administration, API calls and businesses operating infrastructure in Singapore.

Singapore is widely used by Australian companies as an Asia-Pacific hosting location partly because of its relatively short network distance from Australia. When traffic is instead forced east across the Pacific before returning through Japan and other Asian hubs, much of that latency advantage disappears.

The temporary Perth-Jakarta-Singapore route represents an important improvement, but it does not amount to a permanent resolution of the incident.

Until the ASC is physically repaired and normal capacity is restored, Australian carriers remain more dependent on contingency routes and additional capacity being brought online elsewhere in the international network.

Vocus says its next formal update on the incident will be provided by 7pm AEST on Friday, September 18, 2026.