Vocus announces intent to build and operate Australia’s first ducted long-haul fibre route

Vocus announces intent to build and operate Australia’s first ducted long-haul fibre route, connecting Sydney and Melbourne, as part of its Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform initiative.

Vocus today launched the Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform (ADIP) and announced the initial project under that flagship initiative: Australia's first-ever ducted long-haul fibre route connecting Sydney and Melbourne, capable of accommodating up to 6,912 fibre cores (3,456 fibre pairs). Construction of the new route, which will be ready for service in 2029, will result in approximately $500 million in capital investment and create more than 1,000 high-value jobs.

By 2030, data centre capacity in Australia is projected to triple, with AI workloads driving 85 to 95 per cent of long-haul fibre demand and 70 to 80 per cent of metro demand. Additionally, the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, which currently carries roughly 40 per cent of Australia's long-haul data traffic, will be undersupplied in the near future without new investment.

Vocus Chief Executive Officer Andrés Irlando said the decision to launch ADIP was a direct response to customer demand and extensive analysis of fibre markets globally and in Australia. “The AI era runs on high-capacity, diverse fibre networks, the critical arteries that power digital infrastructure ecosystems,” Mr Irlando said. “Australia, like many countries in the world, currently lacks sufficient terrestrial and subsea networks to enable existing and future AI workloads. Vocus – through ADIP – will address skyrocketing customer demand for high-capacity, sovereign fibre networks built to global standards.”

Vocus' new Sydney-Melbourne route will deploy ducted technology – the standard used by the world's leading AI and cloud providers in North America and Europe – for the first time along an Australian intercapital route. Chief Technology Officer Nikos Katinakis said the approach is a deliberate investment in future flexibility and resilience. "Ducted long-haul fibre networks are more demanding and costly to build but will allow us to add capacity in the future without breaking ground again or interfering with customers' active networks. The approach also offers greater resilience and protection against cable cuts to improve customers’ uptime and service levels.”

ADIP is a multi-year initiative to close Australia's growing fibre capacity gap driven by today's AI boom. The new platform will entail large-scale investments in thousands of new fibre route kilometres, thousands of new fibre pairs, and hundreds of terabits of capacity built in locations complementary to the land, water, and power requirements of large AI workloads.

ADIP will also result in mission-critical digital infrastructure essential for national security, economic development and prosperity, regional connectivity access, and many more essential services that Australians rely on, including in banking, health, education, and emergency communications.

Vocus is backed by two of Australia’s most significant infrastructure investors – Macquarie Asset Management and Aware Super – both of whom hold Vocus as an infrastructure asset. Their combined scale and track record of nation-building investments position Vocus – through its existing and extensive fibre networks as well as ADIP – to deliver the fibre backbone Australia increasingly needs to compete globally in the AI era.

ENDS

For further information, please contact Dan Warne on 0421 027 293, dan.warne@vocus.com.au