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SubPartners signs MoU with telcos for APX-West cable between Perth and Singapore.
Singtel and Telstra have signed up to work on the construction of a new submarine cable linking Perth with Singapore.
The telcos have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with submarine cable company SubPartners, the latter announced on Thursday.
Work on the APX-West cable will start by the end of July and is due for completion in 2018, SubPartners said. It will incorporate two fibre pairs, each with a minimum design capacity of 10 Tbps.
"The current data bridge between Singapore and Perth is carried by the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable," said Ooi Seng Keat, VP of carrier services, group enterprise at Singtel.
"The APX-West cable will be a new data superhighway to expand data connectivity and capacity between Singapore and Australia, providing network redundancy and the lowest latency from Australia to Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe," he added.
Meanwhile, Telstra’s executive director for international operations and services, Darrin Webb, said the new system will be "a valuable addition" to the Australian operator’s subsea network in the Asia-Pacific region.
"As consumers and businesses continue to embrace online products and services, such as video streaming and cloud, the demand for international connectivity continues to rise, creating a strong case for building this new cable," Webb said.
"The APX-West system is a consortium cable with all the major players having access to ownership economics at a fraction of the cost of private cable ownership," said Bevan Slattery, founder and CEO of SubPartners. "This is a unique commercial model for
the Perth-Singapore route that will satisfy the ongoing bandwidth requirements of both network operators and Internet content hosts."
He added that the founding parters of the project have committed to purchasing the entire capacity on the cable system.
