Australian digital infrastructure operator SUBCO will build three subsea cable systems spanning 24,000 kilometres across the Indo-Pacific by 2029. The network will carry surging artificial intelligence data traffic.
Each of the three links will feature 24 fiber pairs connecting Australia, Japan, Guam, the United States, Singapore, and Indonesia.
Three routes across 24,000 kilometres
The build program divides into three lines named APX North, APX East-2, and APX West. Together, they create a multi-point transit web across Asian commercial centres and trans-Pacific landing points.
APX North runs 9,500 kilometres from Sydney to Japan by way of Guam. It is the first hypercable connecting Australia directly to the Guam interconnection hub. It also provides the first direct commercial line between Australia and Japan.
Connecting Guam and Los Angeles, APX East-2 spans 10,000 kilometres. SUBCO designed the link to carry trans-Pacific traffic between Asian markets and the United States, while routing data into Australia and Japan via APX North.
Across Southeast Asia, APX West covers 4,600 kilometres between Perth and Singapore. The system includes dedicated branches into Jakarta and Batam in Indonesia.
Direct links bypass traditional hubs
On APX North, switched branching units sit along the deep-sea route. This equipment allows operators to direct selected fiber pairs straight between Australia and Japan without landing traffic on Guam. That cuts transit latency for direct users.
Similar switching architecture runs across APX West in Southeast Asia. Customers can route traffic in and out of Batam and Jakarta to tap local compute clusters, or bypass them entirely when routing directly into Singapore data centres.
“People have been slow to understand that AI factories are dead without massive subsea connectivity to carry tokens from factory to customers. Hundreds and hundreds of terabits per second,” Slattery said.
Bandwidth race shifts to artificial intelligence
Hyperscale cloud operators and Asian enterprise tech groups are realigning their balance sheets toward dedicated AI processing clusters. Those computational facilities require continuous, high-volume data pipes to exchange training datasets and model outputs across regions.
Retail networks, regional logistics platforms, and financial institutions across Southeast Asia rely on cloud-hosted algorithmic models for daily inventory, pricing, and fraud detection. Any bottleneck in trans-Pacific or Southeast Asian trunk capacity directly caps how fast those platforms process transactions.
Adding 24-fiber-pair capacity along routes that previously relied on older cables reduces reliance on congested transit corridors through the South China Sea and Luzon Strait. The primary operating risk sits in naval installation logistics. Specialized cable-laying vessels face tight global scheduling constraints.
Vessel deals and contract milestones
The three cables form the core of SUBCO’s broader target to lay more than 40,000 kilometres of subsea fiber across the Indo-Pacific in just over three years. The company previously built the 9,800-kilometre Oman Australia Cable, establishing direct connectivity between Perth and Muscat.
Management is finalizing cable manufacturing contracts and vessel charter agreements. SUBCO targets Contract in Force status for APX North, APX East-2, and APX West by early 2027 ahead of the planned 2029 operational launch.
