Vocus Plans 4,000 km Brisbane–Darwin Fiber Backbone in Australia

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On September 24, Australian digital infrastructure operator Vocus announced the second major route project under the Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform (ADIP), planning to build an approximately 4,000 km long-haul conduit-based fiber network connecting Brisbane, Townsville, and Darwin. The project has now entered the route planning, technical design, and customer engagement stages, with a target of entering service by 2030.

This route is the second core backbone launched after Vocus initiated the ADIP program this year. The first project is the Sydney–Melbourne route, with UGL serving as development partner; the Brisbane–Darwin project will further extend the ADIP network into Queensland and the Northern Territory, creating a new corridor connecting digital infrastructure nodes in eastern and northern Australia.

The main goal of Vocus in advancing ADIP is to expand long-haul transmission capacity for AI, cloud computing, and data centers. The company expects that by 2030, Australia's data center capacity will expand to approximately three times the current level, with AI workloads potentially accounting for 85% to 95% of long-haul fiber demand and 70% to 80% of metro network demand. ADIP as a whole will expand network infrastructure through thousands of kilometers of new fiber routes, thousands of fiber pairs, and hundreds of Tbps-level capacity.

The Brisbane–Darwin route will also interconnect with Vocus's existing international submarine cables and northern Australian network. Vocus currently owns approximately 51,000 km of Australian domestic fiber backbone and approximately 14,700 km of submarine optical cable, and operates systems including the Australia Singapore Cable and the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable connecting Australia and Singapore.

Among them, the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable has already connected Darwin to the international fiber network. The system has a total length of approximately 7,700 km, connecting Darwin, Perth, Jakarta, and Singapore. With the addition of the Brisbane–Darwin terrestrial fiber, Vocus can further connect Queensland's data centers and cloud computing nodes to Darwin's international gateway, forming a land-sea integrated transmission path oriented toward Asia.