The Sunshine Coast Council said it has signed a contract with RTI Connectivity (RTI-C) to deploy its previously announced international submarine cable. The project includes a 550 kilometer undersea fibre optic cable that will connect the Sunshine Coast to the 9,600 kilometer Japan-Guam-Australia-South (JGA-S) submarine cable.
The Sunshine Coast Council will facilitate the landing of the new international submarine cable to Maroochydore by mid-2020. The cable is expected to boost local business, generate new investment, and improve telecommunications diversity to Australia’s east coast, Sunshine Coast Council said.
The Sunshine Coast International Broadband Submarine Cable Project is designed to upgrade the Sunshine Coast's telecommunications capacity and increase the region's smart city capabilities by providing access to important data networks. Starting 2020, the Sunshine Coast will offer data and telecommunications transmission from the eastern seaboard of Australia to Asia and to the US.
The Cable is expected to generate up to 864 new jobs and AUD 927 million in new investment for Queensland. Queensland businesses will be able to bypass Sydney and connect direct internationally. This connectivity is also expected to give Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft “the opportunity to revisit the benefits of where they locate their Australian investments”, the Council said.
The project has already started and is expected to be operational by 2020, once the submarine cable comes ashore and is in service mid next year. The newly constructed AUD 7.2 million cable landing station facility was complete on the 26 September 2019. Once operational, the cable landing station will house the connection point for the international submarine cable with land-side communication networks.
Connecting the submarine cable to the cable landing station will require land-side works to be undertaken, with installation activity for the sea and land components of the Sunshine Coast submarine cable is currently underway and works are expected to be complete by October.
