SubCo Completes Final Landing of SMAP Subsea Cable in Sydney
January 30, 2026
The completion of a major domestic subsea cable system marks a significant step in bolstering Australia's digital infrastructure resilience and capacity. As data consumption and reliance on cloud services surge, robust and high-capacity connectivity between the nation's key economic hubs has become critical for business continuity and technological competitiveness. SubCo, part of Bevan Slattery's Soda Group, announced this week the successful landing of its SMAP subsea cable at Maroubra, a beachside suburb in Sydney. This event represents the final landing for the 5,000-kilometer (3,106-mile) domestic system, which connects Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. The cable was laid by the Ile d'Yeu cable ship from Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN). The project, first announced in 2023, is on track to become operational in the first quarter of 2026. To support the new infrastructure, SubCo has developed new landing stations in Adelaide and Torquay, a town southwest of Melbourne. In Sydney, the cable is present at Equinix's SY5 data center facility. The system previously made landfall in Perth in June 2025 and in Torquay in November of the same year. Originally designed as a 12-fiber pair system, the SMAP cable was upgraded in May of last year to a planned 16-fiber pair configuration, substantially increasing its potential capacity. While initial plans included a connection to Tasmania, the company decided to drop the Hobart extension in August 2024. The SMAP cable enhances SubCo's portfolio, which also includes ownership of the Oman Australia Cable and capacity on the Indigo subsea system. The company is already planning its next major project, the APX-East cable, a 16-fiber-pair system designed to connect Sydney directly to San Diego, California, with an Australian landing station at NextDC's S1/S2 site. The landing in Sydney, a hub for over a dozen international subsea cables, strengthens the city's position as a critical gateway for data traffic. The SMAP system provides a vital domestic backbone, offering an alternative, high-capacity route for data moving between Australia's eastern and western seaboards. This infrastructure is expected to improve latency, provide redundancy for critical services, and support the growing data demands of enterprises, cloud providers, and government agencies across the continent. Source: datacenterdynamics
