The Oman Australia Cable (OAC) is a 9800km submarine cable connecting Muscat, Oman and Perth, Australia, with additional branching units designed to extend the system into Salalah, Oman and Djibouti in the future.
The OAC delivers cost-effective, reliable, low-latency (97ms) and diverse connectivity between Oman and Australia. and forms part of the only path from the US to EMEA, avoiding the Sunda Strait and the South China Sea.
The OAC cable system consists of 3 fiber pairs, initially designed with 130*100G DWDM for a total system capacity of 39Tbps,and upgraded with Ciena GeoMesh Extreme powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme in the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform to support 400Gbps waves for a total system capacity of 48Tbps in October 2023
The OAC cable land at Equinix PE2 in Perth, Equinix MC1 in Muscat, and a clandestine landing in Diego Garcia.
The OAC cable system is owned and invested by SUB.CO, partnering with Omantel as landing partner in Oman, supplied by SubCom.
The cost of the OAC cable system is approximately US$300million. According to Reuters, the US Pentagon funds for around a third of the entire system cost to include a clandestine link to the U.S. Navy base on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
The Oman Australia Cable (OAC) has been launched for commercial service as of October 23, 2022.