Australian-based submarine cable development specialist SUB.CO announced that the Oman-Australia undersea cable is live and is ready for service.
The Oman Australia Cable (OAC) — 9,800-kilometre 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 the seismic and marine activity causing regular outages on submarine cable and a single point of geographical risk.
OAC is Australia’s first express subsea cable to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa creating a pathway of diverse connectivity from Australia to Oman, Europe, and onwards. A cross-connection to the Indigo cable system gives SUB.CO a route from Australia to Europe and the USA.
Bevan Slattery, founder of SUB.CO, said on LinkedIn: “Super stoked to announce Oman Australia Cable is live!” he added, “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 S and Tom who have played a major role in getting the network up. One more month of testing and we pass commercial traffic!”
The 9,800 km cable landing at Barka, was completed earlier, as it neared entry into service. A key differentiator for the cable is its route. When the cable landed in Perth in July 2021, Slattery said: “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.”
The OAC is a three-fiber pair system with an option to upgrade to four fiber pairs based upon final demand. According to Submarine Cable Networks, the cable boats a design that features 100G dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) and a total capacity of 39 Tbps.
