SUBCO said construction of SMAP remains on track, with the system expected to enter service in 2026. Once completed, the cable will directly connect Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, delivering what the company describes as the most significant upgrade to Australia’s east–west capacity in more than two decades.

Designed as a high-capacity national backbone, SMAP will feature 16 fibre pairs and more than 400Tb of total capacity, providing a new layer of performance and resilience for hyperscalers, carriers and cloud providers operating across Australia. The system is intended to support growing demand from data-intensive and latency-sensitive workloads, including AI, cloud and content delivery.

In parallel with the SMAP build, SUBCO announced a number of complementary capacity investments to enhance diversity and protection across key routes. These include the acquisition of additional subsea capacity on an alternative east–west system, providing geographically diverse routing between Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

SUBCO has also secured new low-latency terrestrial capacity between Sydney and Melbourne, designed to deliver further redundancy and strengthen protection across multiple networks. Combined, the subsea and terrestrial investments are intended to create multiple high-capacity, resilient paths between Australia’s largest digital hubs and major data centre clusters.

The company has also expanded its footprint on Indigo Central, increasing its capacity holdings on the Perth–Sydney express route to further reinforce national connectivity.

The developments reflect SUBCO’s broader strategy to position Australia as a secure, sovereign connectivity hub for the Indo-Pacific region. As AI adoption accelerates and cloud platforms scale, demand for high-performance national backbones is increasing, particularly in markets seeking alternatives to congested or legacy infrastructure.

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