Vocus ASC Fault Disrupts Australia-Singapore Traffic

Matthew Giannelis, Tech Business News
September 6, 2026

Vocus has confirmed a fault on its Australia-Singapore Cable, disrupting international internet and transmission services between Australia and Singapore and requiring affected traffic to be moved onto alternate routes. The incident was first disclosed on 4 September, when Vocus said affected wavelength and Ethernet products were down while internet traffic shifted onto backup paths. As of 6 September, the incident remained active, with Vocus confirming the fault is in Indonesian waters between Anyer and Singapore.

The ASC entered service in September 2018 and was designed, built, and is solely operated by Vocus. The system links Perth and Singapore while also connecting Christmas Island and Indonesia, and is marketed as a direct high-capacity route into Asia-Pacific with onward alternatives to Europe and the United States. Vocus provides wholesale and international links for carriers, resellers, and service providers, so disruption may affect multiple downstream networks where services depend on the ASC or related transit arrangements.

The outage is significant because the ASC is one of Vocus’s key international routes between Western Australia and Singapore, a major regional hub for Australian business, hosting, cloud, and Asia-Pacific connectivity requirements. The source article also reported traceroute observations from Melbourne showing traffic to Singapore travelling via Sydney, San Jose, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, with unusually high round-trip latency. That routing evidence is the article author’s inference, not a Vocus confirmation; the source notes the cable fault does not conclusively prove every poor Melbourne-to-Singapore route was caused by this outage, but it provides a credible explanation for unusually long contingency paths.

Vocus has completed testing from its Perth Cable Landing Station and said it has established the precise location of the fault. The company previously said remote analysis had refined the break location and that a marine repair team had been engaged, and its latest update stated that Vocus is working with its marine repair partner on restoration planning. Emergency cable testing from Perth temporarily affected services on Christmas Island during the testing window. No restoration estimate has been provided, and no confirmed cause, repair date, repair vessel, or quantified active capacity impact has been announced.

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