Vocus plans 4,000km fiber route linking Brisbane and Darwin

Australian telecommunications company Vocus has announced plans to build a 4,000km (2,485-mile) fiber route connecting Brisbane with Darwin.

The project is the second initiative under the company’s Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform (ADIP), which is designed to support rising demand from hyperscaler, neocloud, and enterprise customers.

Vocus has begun route planning, technical design, and customer engagement as part of the project’s early works phase.

The new ducted long-haul fiber route will connect Brisbane, Townsville, and Darwin. It will cover approximately 4,000km and support up to 3,456 fiber strands. Vocus expects the route to be ready for service in 2030.

According to Vocus, ADIP is intended to address Australia’s increasing fiber capacity requirements, driven by investment in AI, cloud services, and digital infrastructure. The wider platform includes thousands of new fiber route kilometers, thousands of new fiber pairs, and hundreds of additional terabits of capacity across subsea and terrestrial networks.

The announcement follows Vocus-commissioned market research estimating that Australia’s data center capacity will triple by 2030, largely because of demand from AI workloads.

“Andustralia is in a period of unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure, data centers, and international connectivity, requiring exponential investment in new terrestrial and subsea fiber networks. Vocus launched ADIP to build the digital infrastructure Australia needs to compete globally for AI,” said Andres Irlando, chief executive officer of Vocus.

“Northern Australia is becoming a critical region for AI, cloud, and digital services, with Queensland and the Northern Territory emerging as important data center precincts and gateways connecting Australia with Asia and the United States.”

The announcement comes a few months after Vocus quadrupled capacity on its Adelaide-Perth 2 (AP2) optical route, one of Australia’s key long-haul fiber corridors.