The upgrade follows the AP1 route enhancement completed in 2025, which enabled coast-to-coast 400G services between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in the east and Adelaide and Perth in the west. Together the two routes form a dual-system optical platform spanning 2,700 kilometres, delivering four times the capacity of the previous generation.

Customers can now access native 400 Gbps services on the route alongside existing 100G options, with the platform designed to support higher-rate services as optical technology advances.

The east-west corridor carries growing significance as AI and cloud workloads become more distributed across Australia, increasing traffic between data centres, cloud platforms and the international cable systems connecting the country to Asia and the US. Hyperscalers are increasingly routing traffic across terrestrial paths between the coasts, with land-based routes offering lower and more consistent latency than subsea alternatives.

Matt Walsh, chief customer officer at Vocus, said the upgrade was part of a deliberate infrastructure strategy: “Australia’s national challenge is no longer internet access, it’s capacity on the long-haul fibre backbone that forms the arteries of the whole system. Upgrading AP1 and AP2 now positions Australia to meet surging east-west data demand as AI adoption accelerates without running into capacity constraints.”

The AP2 upgrade sits alongside Vocus investments in the Australia Singapore Cable and the upcoming Pacific Connect and Australia Connect projects with Google, reinforcing the national backbone underpinning enterprise, government and wholesale connectivity.

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