@JmObserver –
Australian-based submarine cable development specialist SUB.CO confirms that the final splice of the Oman Australia Cable (OAC) has been installed. The OAC — a 9,800 km system manufactured and installed by SUB.CO — has landing points in Perth, Australia; West Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands; and Muscat, Oman. It is the first fully diverse cable between EMEA and Asia that avoids the Malacca Straight, a narrow stretch of water between Indonesia and Malaysia that has a high level of seismic and marine activity causing regular outages on submarine cables and a single point of geographical risk.
“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 towards 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.
It is a three-fibre pair system with an option to upgrade to four fibre pairs based upon final demand. 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.”
Last month, Omantel and SUB.CO entered into a large capacity agreement for connectivity beween the Sultanate of Oman and various key telecom hubs in Europe through Omantel’s extensive subsea network.
Through this arrangement, Omantel will be providing ultra-high capacity connectivity from Muscat to SUB.CO’s new PoP’s in London, Milan and Marseilles effectively extending the Oman Oman Australia Cable from Australia to Oman and all the way to Europe.
Final testing and commissioning of OAC is currently underway with the system expected to become ready for service in September 2022.
