Calais, France and Brisbane, Australia – Tuesday 25th February 2025 – SUBCO announced that Australia’s first submarine “hypercable” SMAP is now fully manufactured and is ready for ship loading at the ASN manufacturing factory in Calais, France.
SMAP is a 400 Terabit-per-second (Tbps) 5,000-kilometre, 16-fibre-pair submarine cable system connecting Sydney, Melbourne (via Torquay), Adelaide and Perth. Once built, the system will be the first intercity cable connecting Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth in well over 20 years, providing much needed diversity and capacity required to better enable AI and Cloud technologies in Australia.
SUBCO’s subsea engineering team was on-site at the ASN factory to oversee the assembly of the cable system, which includes 60 repeaters and four branching units. The team supervised rigorous quality testing to ensure the cable meets the highest industry standards. These tests included shape and tilt equalisation, current and voltage checks, and optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) verification. Additionally, factory simulations replicated the cable’s real-world operating conditions to confirm its resilience.
“We’re thrilled to reach this stage of the SMAP project,” said Lee Harper, SUBCO’s Chief Operating Officer. “After overseeing the system assembly testing at ASN, we’re confident that we’re building the world’s most resilient and reliable subsea cable system.”
SUBCO’s Founder, Bevan Slattery added: “This milestone was an incredibly rewarding one for the team, as we now formally commence the marine program which will see SMAP fully installed and ready to start testing and commissioning in December this year. Lots of work ahead, but at the same time I can’t wait to invite our key customers and partners for the many cable landings planned for around Australia later this year.”
The hyperscale cable will land in Perth mid-year before proceeding to subsequent landing locations. SMAP remains on schedule to be fully installed by December 2025 and ready for commissioning and testing.
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