Singtel inks MOU to build international submarine cable from Perth to Singapore

It’s teamed up with SubPartners and Telstra.

Singtel, SubPartners, and Telstra have inked a memorandum of understanding to build a new international submarine cable called APX-West, which will connect Perth and Singapore.

According to the three parties’ joint release, the cable is poised to begin construction by the end of July this year, and is expected to be completed in 2018. Once completed, APX-West will span more than 4,500 km carrying traffic between Australia and Singapore.

The new cable will incorporate two fibre pairs providing two-way data transmission. Each pair will have a minimum design capacity of 10 Terabits per second. The cable will terminate in facilities operated by the MOU signatories in Singapore and Australia, significantly slashing costs and permitting times.

“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,” stated Ooi Seng Keat, Vice President, Carrier Services, Group Enterprise at Singtel.

The new submarine cable system is a consortium cable where all the major players have access to ownership economics at a fraction of the cost of private cable owner, according Bevan Slattery, SubPartners founder and CEO.