Telstra Expands Connectivity to APAC

Australian telco Telstra has expanded its international capabilities through a joint venture in the Philippines and an announcement on the readiness of the first direct subsea cable to connect Australia with the U.S.

In the Philippines, Telstra has launched a new Point of Presence (PoP) in Pasig City and established a new partnership with Converge, the country's leading pure fiber data network and internet service provider. 

The new partnership, known as Telstra Converge Inc (TCI), comes as the Philippines has become an emerging hub of connectivity in Asia due to its increasing bandwidth demand and high growth potential and its rapidly increasing attractiveness as a submarine cable hub.  

TCI has allowed Telstra to build new terrestrial fiber routes between its East Asia Crossing (EAC) and City-to-City (C2C) submarine cable landing stations in the Philippines and into Makati City in the Metro Manila region, the country’s financial, commercial, and economic hub. 

As the largest foreign submarine cable owner in the Philippines, Telstra also has access to two submarine cable landing stations in the country, forming part of the EAC-C2C network, which is the largest privately-owned submarine cable network with a design capacity of 17.92 Tbps to 30.72 Tbps and a total cable length of 36,800 kilometers. 

Telstra has also announced that its new Southern Cross NEXT — or SX NEXT — cable will be ready for service in July 2022, enhancing connectivity between Australia and New Zealand, and the U.S., 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 one to connect Australia to the US, making it the shortest subsea route and is the only cable that has landing stations in Tokelau and Kiribati in the Pacific Islands.

When SX NEXT launches, it will significantly improve 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 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. 

Image credit: iStockphoto/gorodenkoff