Australian subsea cable company SubPartners has formally launched a project to build a cable system spanning the nation's east, south and west coasts.
The APX-Central will be a four fiber pair system running between Perth on the west coast and Sydney on the east, with planned branches to Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart.
The 5,300km system will have an initial design capacity of up to 32 Tbps, and is expected to be ready for service by the second quarter of 2016.
APX-Central will link up with the previously-announced APX-West cable, which is designed to connect Perth with Changi North in Singapore, and branch to Jakarta, Indonesia and Christmas Island.
SubPartners founder and CEO Bevan Slattery said that with the new cable, the company aims to improve connection diversity in Australia, and serve as a competitive option to existing trans-Australian routes.
“By providing a submarine path connecting Singapore to Sydney, APX-Central will allow greater strategic use of Australia in global networks,” he said.
Existing supplier TE SubCom will also provide the equipment for the APX-Central system.