Vocus Completes Australia Singapore Cable Laying

By Chris Duckett, ZDNet
July 23, 2018

The Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) has been laid, with the final splice made to the south east of Singapore, and is moving into “full configuration” mode, Vocus announced on Monday morning.

CEO and managing director Kevin Russell hailed the work of his team and Alcatel Submarine Networks, with the company stating that the path through the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra was very challenging.

“This final leg from Christmas Island to Singapore presented the greatest engineering and technical challenges, and it's a great credit to the team that we [are] on track in final configuration phase,” Russell said.

Work on the cable laying began in late March, with the AU$170 million cable laid by the Ile de Batz for 3,000km between Christmas Island and Fremantle through deep water, while the Ile de Ré laid around 1,600km of cable between Singapore and Christmas Island in shallow water using a 40-tonne plough to bury the cable to minimise the risk of damage from fishing vessels, anchors, and environmental elements.

“The sea is shallower and it is also highly tidal,” Vocus head of Network Product, Pricing, and Carrier Luke Mackinnon said in March.

“That could be a problem, because cables can move in tidal waters. Over time, they can rub against rocks and suffer from cuts. The other issue is there are many other cables and pipelines in the area. Each time the ship encounters one of these, the cable has to be brought up from the bottom of the sea.”

Once the cable made its way to just off Singapore, it was connected via a 10m trench from 10km off the landing station, and then went into shore through a horizontally bored pipe.

Russell added that Vocus would be using Alcatel Submarine Networks for the AU$137 million Coral Sea Cable System to connect Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.