Leveraging Ciena GeoMesh Extreme, the Oman Australia Cable boasts lower latency, reliability and security.
Following the successful upgrade on the Indigo Submarine Cable, SUBCO is once again using Ciena technologies to provide a resilient and reliable undersea corridor between Australia and Europe via the Oman Australia Cable (OAC). Leveraging Ciena GeoMesh Extreme, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme in the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, OAC has now increased its capacity to a maximum of 48Tb/s, helping support increased bandwidth demands.
“We have a long history of working with Ciena and, together, we are proud to provide our customers with an express gateway for onward capacity from Australia to Africa, Europe and the Middle East. OAC provides the market with the most secure and diverse route to connect Europe with Asia Pacific and is important in boosting Australia’s digital resiliency,” said Lee Harper, Chief Operating Officer, SUBCO.
“Security and reliability are important to SUBCO as OAC prides itself as an alternative for moving traffic from Asia Pacific to Africa, Europe and the Middle East and promotes Australia’s role as a digital hub. With Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme solution, SUBCO can keep pace with proactive bandwidth requirements and reactive performance demands while guaranteeing overall network availability,” said Ivan Polizzi, Regional Managing Director, Ciena Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.
Launched for commercial service in November 2022, OAC is a 9,800km submarine cable connecting Muscat, Oman and Perth, Australia, with an alternate path that leads from Salalah, Oman into Europe and Africa to be ready by 2024.
The cable consists of three fibre pairs with a total design capacity of 45 terabits per second and also includes additional branching units for future spurs that may link to Salalah, Oman and Djibouti City, Djibouti.
Officially switched on in Perth in October 2022, the cable is notable for providing a diverse international route from Perth and a lower-latency path between Australia and Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Competing cables such as the Australia Singapore Cable, INDIGO West and SEA-ME-WE 3 all traverse a similar path via the Sunda Strait to Singapore – OAC traverses the Indian Ocean to the south-western coast of Asia.
In March 2023, SUBCO announced plans to extend the cable with the installation of a diverse 1,200km spur that would land at Salalah, Oman, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.
