The Australian fibre specialist says the new connection will establish Darwin, the Northern Territory capital, “as Australia’s newest entry point for international data connectivity”
Earlier this week, Vocus announced that it had signed contracts to build the final section of the long-awaited Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable (DJSC), an AU$500 million cable system linking Perth, Darwin, Port Hedland, Christmas Island, Jakarta, and Singapore.

With these latest construction contracts, worth AU$100 million, Vocus is funding the creation of a 1,000km cable linking the existing Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) to the North West Cable System (NWCS) in Port Hedland. In doing so, Vocus is creating the DJSC, providing Darwin with its first international submarine cable connection.

ASC currently spans 4,600km, linking Perth on the west coast of Australia to Singapore. The NWCA, meanwhile, runs 2,100km west from Darwin along the north-western coast of Australia before landing at Port Hedland. It will be from here that Vocus’s new link will connect to the ASC.

Thus, once completed, the DJSC will link Perth, Darwin, Port Hedland, Christmas Island, Indonesia, and Singapore, providing 40Tbps of capacity.

The cable is expected to be ready for service by mid-2023.

“The Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable is a massive sign of confidence in the Top End as an international provider for connectivity and digital industries,” said the Northern Territory’s Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner. “This further cements Darwin as Northern Australia’s most advanced digital economy, and will open the door to new opportunities for advanced manufacturing, data-centres and cloud-based computing services for Territorians and investors.”

But it is not only in the submarine cable space that Vocus is working to improve connectivity for the Northern Territory, noting that it has also recently completed the ‘Terabit Territory’ project alongside the region’s federal government, deploying 200Gbps tech on its local fibre network.

“We’ve delivered Terabit Territory — a 25-times increase in capacity into Darwin. We’ve delivered a submarine cable from Darwin to the Tiwi Islands. We’re progressing Project Horizon — a new 2,000km fibre connection from Perth to Port Hedland and onto Darwin. And today we’ve announced the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable, the first international submarine connection into Darwin,” said Vocus Group’s managing director and CEO Kevin Russell. “No other telecoms operator comes close to this level of investment in high-capacity fibre infrastructure.”

The network routes from Adelaide to Darwin to Brisbane received the upgrade to 200Gpbs, with Vocus noting that this will be upgraded again to 400Gbps when the technology becomes commercially available.

Vocus itself was officially acquired by Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA) and superannuation fund Aware Super for AU$3.5 billion Back in June.