Vocus’ newest subsea cable hit by fault

Outage on Australia Singapore Cable

Vocus has confirmed a fault on its Australia Singapore Cable (ASC) system.

The telco said that the fault has hit traffic between Perth and Singapore, but Indonesia to Perth traffic remains unaffected. “Transmission and unprotected Ethernet services traversing the impacted link are currently down,” the company said in a fault notice.

“Protected Ethernet services have switched to another path and will experience increased latency,” it added. “Our teams are currently working to resolve the issue,” Vocus said.

The fault is 60 kilometres from a branching unit between Indonesia and Singapore.

The ASC system was only declared ready for service in mid-September. However, the company began routing traffic over the cable earlier that month due to a major outage on the Sea-Me-We3 (SMW-3) subsea cable system.

“After consulting our team conducting final testing, we are confident that ASC is ready to provide reliable and effective services to mitigate the effect of the SMW-3 outage,” Vocus Group CTO Simon Smith said in a statement released at the time.

“Even though we had announced Vocus ASC ready-for-service on September 14, our priority is ensuring our customers continue to access the connectivity they require,” Smith said.

“The SMW-3 outage has forced our hand, but our testing on ASC is ahead of schedule and we are confident enough to press ASC into early service.”

A cable break on SMW-3 was repaired in early October. Vocus is a part owner of the cable, which like ASC also connects Perth to Singapore.

ASC is a US$170 million, 4600-kilometre cable system that Vocus took control of as part of its buyout of Nextgen Networks.

A consortium of companies is currently rolling out a new cable that will stretch from Perth to Singapore. The INDIGO cable system will also link Perth to Sydney.

The cable is backed by Superloop’s SubPartners as well as AARNet, Google, Indosat Ooredoo, Singtel, and Telstra.

Join the newsletter!

Or

Sign up to gain exclusive access to email subscriptions, event invitations, competitions, giveaways, and much more.

Membership is free, and your security and privacy remain protected. View our privacy policy before signing up.

Error: Please check your email address.

Tags NetworkingTelecommunicationssubmarine cablesVocusVocus Groupsubsea cableAustralia Singapore Cable

More about AARNetASCAustraliaGoogleNextgen NetworksSingtelSubPartners

Show Comments
[]