English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) So Subpartners and Superloop are busily progressing the Indigo cable system project and there has been tremendous progress over recent weeks. A huge milestone was reached in mid July with Alcatel's Ile De Brehat cable laying ship departing Calais in France with over 7000km of cable and repeaters destined for an area near Christmas Island via Singapore. From there it will begin laying the cable in August 2018 down the Western Australian coast to Perth before continuing through to Sydney!
At the same time a freighter is being loaded with the remaining cable before heading off to Singapore next week. (early Aug) There it will transfer its 2000km of cable onto the Ile de Re which will then get busy laying/burying it's cable for the section between the Christmas Island area and up to Singapore via Jakarta.
The Indigo cable is made up of two sections. Indigo West is the first and connects Perth to Singapore via Jakarta. The second is a ground breaking submarine cable between Perth and Sydney! It's the first of its kind. Capacity can be bought the whole way between Sydney and Singapore or just on Central or West.
Indigo West
Indigo Central
Indigo - The Consortia cables
So why are the Indigo cables unique? The cables are owned by a consortia of Australian and the worlds largest technology companies.
Each of the consortia members have their own dedicated capacity on the cables and each brings their own unique benefits to the cable/s and to the other consortia members. Some worth highlighting are -
- Subpartners and Superloop are the construction party, leveraging their staff's combined decades of experience laying international and domestic submarine cables. Subpartners have also constructed the beach man hole (BMH) and performed the HDD core drilling conduits out into the deep water at Coogee for the Sydney cable landing. Superloop are also in the unique position to provide full end to end connectivity given we have fibre networks in both Australia and Singapore. We can drop your Indigo capacity into any of our on-net data centres regardless of the DC operator. So no additional fibre/capacity costs at each end. (NEXTDC/Equinix/Global Switch/STT/DRT/Telstra/Keppel & more)
- Telstra have provided the cable landing point in Perth using their existing CLS. Thanks Telstra!
- Indosat Ooredoo have provided great support in landing the cable into Jakarta particularly around the many regulatory approvals required to do so. Nothing like having one of Indonesia's largest carriers helping the cable to succeed now and in the future. It's also really important to acknowledge that having Indosat as a member will be invaluable in the event of any future cable damage. (It's buried in the shallow water sections but it's not impossible) History has shown us that delays can be caused by the time it takes to get approvals for access to Indonesian waters for the repair to take place.
- Singtel have provided the cable landing point in Singapore where many of the world's major international cable land. Here it meets Superloop's terrestrial fibre network.
So why Indigo and Superloop?
Indigo is the only submarine cable connecting Sydney to Singapore in the west and is the shortest by far. All other Submarine cable go via the East coast. These cables need to avoid the volcanic areas of Papua New Guinea and the Philippines as they are seismically very active. Most go via Guam and then have to head back down to the south west to arrive into Singapore. These cable are some 13,000km long against Indigo's 9000km. This equates to a lower latency of some 40ms!
Remember that 90% of the path from Sydney to Singapore is protected by the incredible depth of the ocean which is mostly between 3500 and 6000 meters! Those sections that aren't in deep water are buried/armour plated to prevent damage from anchors and the like. Traditional terrestrial cables across Australia can be prone to outages caused by physical damage, extreme temperatures, erosion and other factors. One several years ago was caused by a wombat digging a burrow in the wrong spot! (Right spot for him/her maybe:)
The power of Superloop's networks in Australia and Singapore means you will not have any other cost associated with the last mile connectivity between the CLS and your DC PoP's regardless of the DC operator*. We look after that (You're welcome!)
What's that? You need capacity before the beginning of 2019?
No problems! Superloop are selling capacity on Indigo Central and West now but providing temporary capacity on other cable systems in the meantime. (East coast & West Coast routes available now) As soon as Indigo is tested and commissioned we will make a time with you for the cutover. Or you may choose to keep both for redundancy, it's up to you.
So what are you waiting for? Get on board! (Pun intended)
*Any on-net Superloop DC's
Source: Superloop
