Vocus plans 4000km Brisbane to Darwin fibre route

Vocus plans to build a roughly 4000-kilometre ducted fibre route connecting Brisbane, Townsville and Darwin, expanding its Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform beyond the Sydney to Melbourne corridor.

The company announced the Brisbane to Darwin route on September 24, according to Vocus material and reports from iTnews and W.Media. Vocus said it had started route planning, technical design and customer engagement activities for the project.

The route is the second link under the Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform, known as ADIP. The first stretch runs between Sydney and Melbourne, with UGL appointed as development partner, iTnews reported on September 24. Vocus expects the Brisbane to Darwin route to be ready for service in 2030, a year after the Sydney to Melbourne link, according to iTnews.

Vocus said the new long-haul route is intended to support rising demand for network connectivity associated with AI, cloud and other digital systems. Data Centre Dynamics, in a September 25 report, said the route is designed to accommodate up to 3456 fibre strands and support demand from hyperscaler, neocloud and enterprise customers. W.Media also reported the 3456 fibre-core design on September 24.

In a statement reported by iTnews, Vocus chief executive Andres Irlando said northern Australia was becoming a critical region for AI, cloud and digital services, with Queensland and the Northern Territory emerging as data centre precincts and gateways connecting Australia with Asia and the United States.

W.Media, citing Vocus, reported that Irlando said the expansion reflected increasing infrastructure requirements linked to AI and data centre investment. The same report said the route would extend Vocus’s existing northern Australian network, including the Darwin-Jakarta-Singapore Cable and North-West Cable System.

W.Media also reported Vocus chief technology officer Nikos Katinakis as saying the Brisbane to Darwin corridor would provide additional capacity, route diversity and resilience while extending the ducted intercapital design introduced with the Sydney to Melbourne project.

The company has not provided further details in the supplied material on construction timing, project cost, customers, commercial agreements or service pricing for the Brisbane to Darwin route.

The project comes as Australian telecommunications and data centre operators assess fibre capacity requirements driven by cloud, AI and international connectivity demand. Vocus is positioning ADIP as part of that infrastructure build-out, with the Brisbane, Townsville and Darwin route adding a northern corridor to its previously announced eastern seaboard deployment.