2000km AI-speed network for the Pilbara and Mid West, and the final link in our national figure of 8.
This month, we lit Horizon end to end – our new 2,000 kilometre fibre network running from Perth to Port Hedland, inland through the Mid West and Pilbara, giving this economic engine-room region its first competitive, long-haul fibre connection.
For decades, the digital infrastructure linking Australia’s most valuable resources corridor to the world has run on a single long-haul cable – one provider, one route, no alternative.
That’s a remarkable situation for a region that earns a large share of the nation’s export income. We’re changing that – with Horizon, the region now has a real choice, an independent second route, and a direct path into Asia for the first time.
Horizon is the first major milestone under our Vocus 2030 strategy, which is about closing the gap between Australia’s fast-rising demand for digital infrastructure and the fibre available to meet it. There’s more to come.
Why we built inland
Most national networks follow the easier-to-build coastal route between the capital cities. That’s great for big cities, but it skips over regional towns. We have instead built inland, to the mines, farms and towns that drive the regional economy.
The route heads north from Perth through the Mid West, inland from Geraldton, before continuing into the Pilbara and on to Port Hedland.
The region’s economic activity happens well away from the coast. Reaching it meant working across some of the most physically demanding country in Australia.
Built for the AI and cloud era
Horizon carries up to 38 terabits per second inland to the Pilbara, with room to grow to more than 90 terabits per second. To put it simply, it is so much capacity that no customer on this network needs to worry about available speed for a very long time.
We have installed that much headroom deliberately. Automation, remote operations and data-intensive processing are already running across this region and they are growing quickly. We’ve put the capacity the region needs in five years in the ground today.
Horizon also connects directly into NEXTDC’s new data centres at Newman and Port Hedland, which were planned and built alongside the cable. That means data can be processed close to where it is generated on mine sites and farms, rather than travelling across the country and back. It’s what real-time automation needs to make rapid decisions in real-time production processes.
Engineered for extreme conditions
Capacity counts for nothing if the network goes down, and the Mid West and Pilbara are some of Australia’s toughest environments.
Our engineers modelled the risks site by site: extreme heat, pervasive fine dust, the largest number of cyclones anywhere in Australia, severe aridity broken by flash floods and bushfires.
We’ve installed the fibre as deep as a metre underground. Sensitive transmission electronics sits protected in ‘controlled environment vaults’ weighing up to 29 tonnes each (pictured above), powered by solar arrays and batteries where there is no grid. The route carries a design life into the 2050s and is monitored around the clock.
How Horizon improves resilience for the whole country
Horizon closes the western loop of our national figure of 8 network. The network now forms the shape of a number eight across the map of Australia. If a core network cable is cut on one side, most customer data services can be rerouted the other way around the loops, or out through our international submarine cables and back into Australia.
In practice, a Pilbara mine connected to Horizon can reach Perth through three separate routes: along Horizon, across our Darwin to Adelaide to Perth route, or out to sea and back.
For operations where a connectivity failure can halt production, potentially hamper safety systems and isolate thousands of workers from family, that diversity is the difference between an incident and a crisis.
A faster path to Asia
The Pilbara is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. That means using online services hosted in Singapore can be more responsive than those hosted in Sydney or Melbourne.
Horizon links into our Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable, so customers in the Pilbara can have a direct, lower-delay route into one of the world’s largest hubs for cloud computing and many of the APAC region’s corporate head offices.
No more tromboning traffic down to Perth or the east coast before going out on international links – Horizon provides a fast path to Asia.
Built and supported locally
Horizon was built, and will be supported, by people based in Western Australia. We trace our roots here to Amcom, founded in Perth in the 1990s, and Vocus has operated locally since the sector was deregulated in 1997.
That local presence is what made Horizon possible. Negotiating land access and heritage approvals across 2,000 kilometres of remote country works best when you can sit down face to face.
We are here for the long haul. Enterprise, government and wholesale customers can connect to Horizon today.
Digital inclusion is economic inclusion, and investments such as Vocus’ Project Horizon are delivering connectivity across regional and remote Western Australia. This expanded capacity increases competition and helps lower the cost of data, making internet services more affordable and reliable for regional and remote communities.
“By connecting directly into our facilities in Port Hedland and Newman, Horizon strengthens the critical infrastructure ecosystem supporting one of the world’s most important resources regions. As operations become increasingly automated, data-intensive and AI-enabled, resilient, low-latency connectivity and local digital infrastructure are becoming essential. The combination of Horizon’s high-capacity fibre and our edge data centres will help customers access cloud, AI and advanced digital capabilities closer to where data is generated and used.
This investment in regional WA, in partnership with Vocus, will help scientists working on some of the most significant research projects in history to collaborate more effectively with international partners, accelerate the transfer of research data, and supports the development of the WA space sector. By expanding the capacity and resilience of Australia’s National Research and Education Network, we are ensuring our researchers are equipped to tackle some of the world’s most complex scientific challenges and maintain Australia’s position at the forefront of discovery.
Fortescue has partnered with Vocus on the Horizon project since 2021. We could not have asked for a better partner. Fortescue provided us access to its land and the use of its rail corridors to run the cable, and opened doors to the stakeholder groups whose support a project like this depends on. Their commitment to the communities they operate in is clear, and they understand that better connectivity lifts the whole region, not just one operation. Horizon would not have happened without them.
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