INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling

Telstra boosts connectivity between Australia and US with Southern Cross NEXT subsea cable .

The Southern Cross NEXT cable ( SX NEXT ) will enhance connectivity between Australia and New Zealand and the US , with branching units to Fiji , Kiribati and Tokelau . Telstra is a 25 % shareholder of the Southern Cross Cables Network ( SCCN ), the owner of SX NEXT .

SX NEXT will be the first single span express cable , and the first direct cable , to connect Australia to the US , making it the shortest subsea route . It is also the only cable that has landing stations in Tokelau and Kiribati in the Pacific Islands .

SX NEXT has a four-fiber pair cable system capable of transporting 72Tbps , a remarkable addition to the current bandwidth and connectivity options linking Australia and the South Pacific Islands to the US .

The cable is built using up to 400G Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing ( DWDM ) technology and purpose-built landing stations , which will deliver high-speed connectivity and low latency between countries , as well as a resilient network infrastructure for the Pacific region .

When SX NEXT launches , it will lead to a major improvement in Internet quality and Internet penetration across Oceania . Allowing different data streams to be sent simultaneously over a single optical fiber network will enable a higher data transfer rate and optimize network investment .

As a result , the faster connectivity , stability and resiliency provided by SX NEXT will help accelerate Digital Transformation for businesses across the region .

There are 12 international submarine cables connecting Australia to the rest of the world , and the SX NEXT cable will be the third cable in the SCCN ecosystem .

The SX NEXT cable is among the largest single submarine cable infrastructure projects in the world which spans approximately 15,857 kilometers along the sea floor .

SX NEXT complements the existing Southern Cross and Endeavor-AAG cable systems in connecting Australia and the US . The redundancy of the Southern Cross cables with SCCN creates seamless , efficient paths from Australia into Asia-Pacific , the US and beyond .

Oliver Camplin-Warner , Telstra International CEO , said Telstra was delighted to have partnered with SCCN to launch the new subsea cable SX NEXT .

“ With the rise of cloud-based services and hybrid remote working models , connectivity with diversity and reliability is more critical than ever to ensure constant uptime and uninterrupted services ,” he said .

“ We will continue to innovate on our network infrastructure and work with our industry partners on providing more accessible , faster and more stable connectivity to our customers , enabling them to connect with the rest of the world .

“ The SX NEXT cable will strengthen Telstra ’ s existing subsea network infrastructure – one of the largest in the Asia-Pacific region – and solidify our commitment to connecting people and communities from Australia and the Pacific Islands to the US and around the world .” p

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