SUBCO’s SMAP hypercable moves closer to service as Australia prepares major east–west capacity upgrade

SUBCO says construction of its SMAP "hypercable" is on schedule, with the system due to go live in 2026. The cable will directly link Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, in what the company calls the biggest boost to Australia’s east–west network capacity in more than 20 years. Built as a national backbone, SMAP will use 16 fibre pairs and deliver over 400Tb of capacity to support data-heavy and latency‑sensitive work, including AI, cloud services and content delivery.

Alongside the build, SUBCO is buying extra subsea capacity on an alternative east–west route and adding new low‑latency terrestrial capacity between Sydney and Melbourne to improve resilience and route diversity. It has also increased its holdings on the Indigo Central Perth–Sydney route. Together, these steps are meant to create multiple high‑capacity paths between Australia’s main digital hubs and data centre clusters, and to support SUBCO’s wider goal of positioning Australia as a secure, sovereign connectivity hub for the Indo‑Pacific.