Vocus confirms the completion of the Coral Sea Cable System connecting Sydney, Honiara, Port Moresby and the Solomon Islands, making it ready for service.

The 4,700km Coral Sea cable as well as the 730km Solomon Islands domestic network were officially signed off by the department of foreign affairs and trade a month earlier than scheduled.

“Vocus is incredibly proud to partner with the Australian Government on a project that will have a transformative social and economic impact on the people of Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea,” said Kevin Russell (pictured), group managing director and CEO of Vocus. “The two networks have been successfully tested, and, as of Friday last week, are now in the hands of their new owners - the Coral Sea Cable Company, with respect to the international network, and Solomon Islands Submarine Cable Company, with respect to the Solomon Islands Domestic Network.”

The new Coral Sea cable company will operate and maintain the new system. Both Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands own a majority stake in the cable and will receive all revenue generated, while similarly the Solomon Islands owns its domestic cable and all revenue generated.

“I’d like to offer our thanks to the Australian Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for entrusting Vocus with the responsibility to deliver this project on their behalf,” continued Russell. “It’s a fantastic milestone and caps off almost two years of hard work by our world-class team of experts at Vocus, and the many stakeholders involved in the project.”

The system was announced in June 2018, at a cost of approximately AUS$136 million ($93 million) when the Australian government awarded the contract to Vocus Communications. A month later Vocus then confirmed that it be working with Alcatel Submarine Networks to build and deploy the system. At the start of the year, XSite Modular was named as the designer-builder of a modular cable landing station for PNG DataCo in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Then in September, the system officially landed in Australia.

 

Source: https://www.capacitymedia.com/