Vocus to invest $500m in fibre route between Sydney and Melbourne
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The news: Communications infrastructure business Vocus plans to invest $500 million in what it claims is “Australia’s first-ever ducted long-haul fibre route connecting Sydney and Melbourne” under a new Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform announced today.
The context: The fibre route — the physical infrastructure that enables the deployment of fibre cables — will be capable of accommodating up to 6,912 fibre cores (3,456 fibre pairs) and is expected to be ready for service in 2029. Vocus said it will create more than 1,000 jobs.
The route is being developed in support of the data centre investment boom, with the Sydney-Melbourne corridor expected to be “undersupplied in the near future without new investment”.
The corridor currently accounts for 40% of Australia’s long-haul data traffic.
Vocus said AI workloads are expected to drive 85 to 95% of demand by 2030, on the expectation that data centre capacity will triple.
What they said: “AI era runs on high — capacity, diverse fibre networks, the critical arteries that power digital infrastructure ecosystems,” Vocus CEO Andres Irlando said.
“Australia, like many countries in the world, currently lacks sufficient terrestrial and subsea networks to enable existing and future AI workloads.”
Vocus chief technology officer Nikos Katinakis said: “Ducted long-haul fibre networks are more demanding and costly to build but will allow us to add capacity in the future without breaking ground again or interfering with customers’ active networks.”
“The approach also offers greater resilience and protection against cable cuts to improve customers’ uptime and service levels,” Katinakis said.
The source: Vocus media release
