en.Wedoany.com Reported - The approximately 5,000 km Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth (SMAP) submarine cable built by Subco is now operational, marking the largest intercontinental communication capacity upgrade in Australia in nearly 25 years.

Subco founder and co-CEO Bevan Slattery noted that for the first time, Australia's four major cities are connected via a single, fully armored, high-capacity submarine system, providing the resilience and scale needed for the country's digital economy and its role as a connectivity hub in the Indo-Pacific region. The SMAP submarine cable consists of 16 fiber pairs, designed to carry over 400 Tbit/s of IT capacity. Announced three years ago, it is known as Australia's first super-cable, offering route diversity and resilience for the Sydney-Perth corridor, and is the first submarine cable to land in Melbourne and Adelaide. Subco announced that the SMAP submarine cable system launched with several founding customers, including 5GN, Swoop, Aussie Broadband, Cloudflare, GSL, Host Universal, Kinetix, Leaptel, Megaport, Telair, and Virtutel.

Aussie Broadband Chief Technology Officer Brad Parker stated that by joining early as a foundation customer of SMAP, the company has secured the capacity, performance, and resilience needed for its customers for the next decade and beyond. The hyperscale capacity and increased redundancy enable it to transmit large volumes of traffic between capital city points of presence with lower latency, higher availability, and greater room for growth.

Cloudflare Director of Network Strategy Damian Matacz pointed out that a better internet is built on resilient infrastructure. SMAP provides Cloudflare with a diverse new domestic path across Australia, strengthening its network and enhancing the experience for all customer services.

Many early customers rely on SMAP to provide the capacity needed to support the exponential growth in bandwidth demand expected in the coming years.

Telair Managing Director Edward Wenman said becoming a foundation customer of Subco on SMAP is a significant step in future-proofing Telair's network, enabling it to meet future demands for capacity and resilience. Virtutel Managing Director David Allen believes the newly activated super-cable meets all conditions in terms of redundancy and future additional network construction. Leaptel CEO Matthew Enger also noted that the company is growing rapidly, especially in Western Australia, and SMAP provides a clear path for resilience and capacity.

The SMAP submarine cable system goes live as its operator Subco has announced multiple expansion plans in Australia in recent months.

Earlier this month, the company announced a partnership with AI data center developer Firmus to extend the SMAP cable to Tasmania. The project, named Bernacchi-1, will establish the first new fiber connection between Tasmania and mainland Australia in over 20 years, providing the state with over 60 Tbit/s of additional capacity, exceeding the total capacity of all existing fiber cables across Bass Strait. The Tasmania branch is expected to be operational in the second quarter of 2027.

In March, Subco introduced two inter-capital routes on its Sydney-Melbourne corridor, combining submarine and terrestrial connections. The route is now connected offshore via the SMAP hyperscale cable and onshore via a new 12T Sydney-Melbourne terrestrial cable, providing true diversity for Australia's busiest corridor. Meanwhile, Subco expanded connectivity across its domestic and international cable networks, offering new data center points of presence in Australia's four major cities.

In January, the company announced the APX East super-cable, which will directly connect Australia to the mainland United States. This 16-fiber pair system is expected to be operational in the fourth quarter of 2028, with segments extending to Hawaii and Fiji to be completed in 2029. APX East will be the first international cable to land north of the existing cable protection zone in Sydney, aiming to further enhance geographic diversity and national network resilience.

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