Ann: INDIGO Cable System Lands in Sydney, page-3

Some interesting info from the comment's section..

Why take such an expensive route Sydney to Perth by sea, why not follow the original fibre optic cable across the nullabour plain?
- It actually costs about the same (probably a bit cheaper), is much, much cheaper to maintain (powered at both ends and set/forget) compared to needing to maintain repeater huts etc. and we expect have a much higher uptime due to very few issues that can effect the cable (3,000m deep in the ocean). Also, being diverse from existing paths mean you have greater resiliency from the factors that would normally take out similar paths (washout/floods, fire etc.)


What’s the benefit of this compared to satellites excluding speed?
- There is hardly any capacity on a satellite link - and satellites are very expensive to produce - launch and operate. and latency is very high - almost unusable.
This cable can do 36Tbps and with some new kit, suspect this will get to almost 60Tbps in the next few years. Satellites can only do much, much less than this. Also, as you suspect latency difference is massive

Hopefully a branching unit in place for a future SA spur?
- Unfortunately - no spur.