Vocus has flagged its plan to build Australia’s first-ever ducted long-haul fibre route connecting Sydney and Melbourne, the initial project of the Australian Infrastructure Platform (ADIP), capable of accommodating up to 6,912 fibre cores (3,456 fibre pairs).
According to Vocus, construction of the new route will be ready for service in 2029, resulting in approximately A$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.,” it said. “Additionally, the Sydney-Melbourne corridor, which currently carries roughly 40 per cent of Australia’s long-haul data traffic, will be under-supplied 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 said the 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.”
Vocus said 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.
