Southern Cross NEXT Submarine Cable Completes Its Pan-Pacific Voyage And Lands In Australia

Sydney, Australia, December 21, 2021 – Independent submarine capacity provider, Southern Cross Cables Limited (Southern Cross), has announced its Southern Cross NEXT cable (SX NEXT) has landed in Coogee Beach in New South Wales, Australia, as part of the final stage of the submarine cable rollout between Los Angeles and Sydney.

The project will move on to finalise the branch landings in Fiji and final splice in early January, and it is expected the cable will then be ready for service in Q2, 2022.

Once live, the SX NEXT cable will provide an additional 72 terabits of data per second between Australia, New Zealand and the United States and provide on-ramp connections to Pacific Islands Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati. The 72 terabits of additional capacity is the equivalent of streaming more than 4.5 million Ultra HD 4k videos simultaneously.

Southern Cross CEO, Mr Laurie Miller, said the SX NEXT cable will deliver significant benefits once it is fully operational, and will essentially double the amount of direct international cable capacity connectivity from the East Coast of Australia to the West Coast of the United States.

“Australia and New Zealand will benefit from this new direct and low latency link with the technology innovation hub of the world in California. The new system will also complement our existing lowest latency links between Sydney and Auckland, and Auckland to Los Angeles enhancing our eco-system connectivity with our closest neighbours across the Tasman and the Pacific,” he said. “For Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati in particular, the SX NEXT cable will provide the highest capacity connectivity they’ve experienced to date.

“Never has the world been so reliant on internet connectivity as a means to maintaining productivity, and this will provide an incredible boost in internet connectivity and capacity to each country.”

The $350 million SX NEXT cable is being deployed by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) and is among the largest single submarine cable infrastructure projects in the world. The cable is estimated to span approximately 15,857 kilometres along the sea floor between the aforementioned six nations.

The project began in 2017 with an undersea survey which maps the seafloor to determine the ideal and safest route upon which to deploy the cable. Since then, the company has celebrated the initial connection with Hermosa Beach, California, Tokelau and Kiribati, and at Takapuna in New Zealand, prior to the landing in Coogee Beach, Australia.

The SX NEXT cable will be the third cable in the Southern Cross ecosystem, adding the 72 terabits to an existing 20 terabits of capacity potential of the current Southern Cross systems.

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