Vocus, Australia's specialist digital infrastructure provider, has entered a strategic partnership with Google for Australia Connect, a 42,500km high-capacity submarine network linking to Australia’s north, east and west coasts.

Australia Connect will extend beyond the previously announced Pacific Connect system that links Australia and the West Coast of the United States with a multi-terabit ring network through and between Fiji and French Polynesia, landing in Sydney and Melbourne.

Australia Connect complements Pacific Connect with four additional network links connecting Melbourne to Perth, Perth to Christmas Island, Christmas Island to Singapore, Christmas Island to Darwin.

"Vocus is thrilled to have the opportunity to deepen our strategic network partnership with Google, and to play a part in establishing critical digital infrastructure for our region. Australia Connect will bolster our nation's strategic position as a vital gateway between Asia and the United States by connecting key nodes located in Australia's East, West, and North to global digital markets,” said Jarrod Nink, Interim Chief Executive Officer, Vocus.

“The combination of the new Australia Connect subsea cables with Vocus' existing terrestrial route between Darwin and Brisbane, will create a low latency, secure, and stable network architecture. It will also establish a unique and diverse domestic inter-capital network, with reach and protection across terrestrial and subsea paths for all of Australia’s mainland capital cities.

“By partnering with Google, we are ensuring that Vocus customers have access to high capacity, trusted and protected digital infrastructure linking Australia to the Asia Pacific and to the USA.

“The new subsea paths, combined with Vocus’ existing land-based infrastructure, will improve diversity, capacity and reliability for Google, our customers and partners," Nink said.

“Australia Connect advances Google’s mission to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful. We’re excited to collaborate with Vocus to build out the reach, reliability, and resiliency of internet access in Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region,” said Brian Quigley, VP, Global Network Infrastructure, Google Cloud.

Perth, Darwin, and Brisbane are key beneficiaries of this investment and are now emerging as key nodes on the global internet, building on the competitive and diverse subsea and terrestrial infrastructure already established by the Vocus network.

Vocus will be in a position to supply an initial 20-30Tbps of capacity per fibre pair on the announced systems, depending on the length of the segment.