Superloop Links Region as Ultrafast, Reliable Fibre-optic Network
By South China Morning Post
May 28, 2019
By South China Morning PostTelecommunications in Asia-Pacific will never be the same again as an out-of-the-box idea from an Australian telecoms company sets to forever change how businesses in the region communicate information. While local players focus on building up their infrastructure within their territories, fibre-optic specialist Superloop took the industry by surprise when it linked Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong into one ultrafast and extremely reliable telecom loop.
“In telecom parlance, the very last connection in a telephone exchange is called a local loop,” says CEO Drew Kelton. “We built the network up from that concept by laying thousands of kilometres of fibre, including installing connections on the seabed from Sydney to Perth to Singapore. It is all fibre optic and next generation. It is super fast, super efficient, super compatible and super expandable. We have made an Asia-Pacific super loop and have done lots of other exciting things associated with it.”
The Australian Stock Exchange-listed company is a founding partner in the subsea cable system called Indigo, which owns and operates land-based fibre-optic infrastructure within the cable landing countries. This combination of infrastructure ownership provides Superloop superior flexibility in serving clients given its control over the economics and service proposition.
Multinational companies in Asia, including banks, traders, information vendors and data centres seeking to access high-capacity capability in all locations, simply have to plug in to get connected to the whole virtualised region. The company welcomes key strategic locations and buildings that would require fibre-optic infrastructure for their business. Besides eyeing Asian companies, Superloop is also targeting foreign telecom carriers to offer its infrastructure as their distribution point in Asia in a “carrier’s carrier” business model.
“An international carrier may have a client in Sydney, Hong Kong and Singapore. You can get a bit of the service from Telstra, a part of it from Singtel and a bit of the service from HKT, but we are the only company in the world that can offer exactly that same service level and economics in all three jurisdictions. That makes us totally one of a kind,” Kelton says.
