Summary Bullets:

• SubCo will establish a trans-pacific submarine cable project dubbed ‘APX East’ that will directly connect Australia with mainland US.

• While Australia already has sovereign owned cables, it’s crucial that this type of infrastructure remains in domestic ownership to ensure data sovereignty is met.

Over the last few years, international connectivity strategies have largely been driven by scale – favoring bigger pipes, alternative routes, and the assumption that capacity would keep pace with demand. However, with the rise in data traffic contributed by AI, data-intensive workloads, and diminishing tolerance for outages, this is forcing carriers to rethink how international networks are designed and evaluated.

In that context, submarine network developer and operator SubCo, based in Australia, announced that it would build the APX East cable, directly linking Australia to the US by 2028. This can be viewed as a significant step forward in strengthening Australia’s national telecommunications resilience. As data continues to become a core and strategic national asset, a sovereign-owned international cable offers Australia greater control over how its critical information is transmitted, secured, and governed – reducing reliance on foreign-controlled infrastructure at a time of rising geopolitical and cyber risk. While this project is a commercial infrastructure, it will also be a nation-building digital backbone. Given cables are tied to national security and strategic importance, the Australian government should take steps to encourage local investments and ensure ownership for securing Australia’s digital future.

SubCo plans to establish a direct trans-pacific optical link connecting Sydney (Australia) to San Diego, California (US) using a 16 fiber-pair design with no intermediate landings. The system is expected to cost $500 million (AUD747 million). At an estimated length of 12,000 to 13,000 km (7,500 to 8,075 miles), the cable is expected to be the longest continuous subsea optical route in the world. The project is intended to support the rapid growth of AI infrastructure in Australia, where hyperscalers and emerging neocloud providers are expected to deploy up to 3GW of AI ”factories” in the coming years. This cable will complement the company’s existing Oman Australia Cable (OAC) connecting Perth (Australia) to Muscat (Oman), which was launched in late-2022. It is worth noting that both Vocus and Telstra (including Endeavour to Hawaii) have already built their own cables, which demonstrates that private businesses are ready to invest in the country’s digital backbone. As the importance of this infrastructure grows, ensuring continued domestic ownership of future investments is critical.

As highlighted in GlobalData’s recent subsea cable report (AI Growth Collides with Infrastructure Limits, December 19, 2025), governments are increasingly intervening in the development and operation of cable systems due to digital sovereignty concerns. These concerns directly affect government services, defense, healthcare, and other critical industries. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly important that Australia exercises greater control over how sensitive data is routed and protected, reducing exposure to foreign jurisdictions, commercial priorities, and strategic interests of foreign-owned hyperscalers. In an era of heightened cyber risk and geopolitical uncertainty, ownership and control of digital pathways are as important as capacity.

Governments already co-invest in critical infrastructure such as roads, power, ports, and defense assets. Subsea cables should now be recognized with the same category. The government could show support in various ways from co-investment, underwriting – it could even have long-term capacity commitments. The goal is not to remove private capital; rather, targeted public participation can help ensure that national security, resilience, and data sovereignty are met. As the window narrows for Australia to shape its digital future, projects like APX East will determine who controls the arteries of the nation’s digital economy.

Summary Bullets:

• Vocus has launched its business-focused MVNO brand, Vocus Mobile, aiming to disrupt the market and inject fresh competition into an already hypercompetitive landscape.
• Backed by an expanded customer base from the TPG Enterprise acquisition, Vocus is well-positioned to accelerate growth with its existing client base.

Australian telecoms infrastructure provider Vocus has finally launched its own business-focused MVNO brand, Vocus Mobile. Leveraging Optus’s 4G and 5G networks the company aims to position itself as a one-stop provider for enterprise communications, offering connectivity solutions across networking, collaboration, and now mobility as it looks to stand out with a range of self-serve features to create a better user experience for its clients. Will the entrance of another MVNO challenger selling basic mobile connectivity in an already crowded market make a difference?

At launch, Vocus will offer three traditional types of mobile connectivity services, including mobile voice and data for Smartphone use, 5G data plan for broadband, and 4G backup to support business continuity when primary networks are down. Customers will be supported by its self-service mobile fleet management platform, Mobile Fleet 360, giving businesses the ability to manage their mobile fleets with near real-time dashboards, bulk activation of services, and the able to configure roaming settings, reducing the reliance on traditional support channels. Vocus’s foray into the enterprise mobile services market is not surprising following on from its acquisition of TPG Telecom’s fiber network assets and its enterprise, government, and wholesale fixed infrastructure business. It has been anticipated for many years, with the company having a long-standing wholesale agreement with Optus through its consumer and SMB brands Dodo, iPrimus, and Commander. While back in 2019, the company extended its agreement to include its various other brands to provide 5G access to support its growth strategy by expanding and growing market share in large enterprise and SMB segments.

The Australian mobile market has three mobile network operators with Telstra maintaining its superior network leadership for many years. Telstra covers 95% of the country’s population with 5G coverage and 99.7% with 4G coverage, equating to land coverage of approximately three million square kilometers, almost three times the land coverage than any of its nearest rivals. To compete against Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom (owner of Vodafone in Australia) recently formed a network sharing agreement earlier in 2025, which extends their 5G coverage to 80.5% of the population and 4G reach to 98.4% of the Australian population with over one million square kilometers.

While the Australian enterprise telecommunications market remains in flux, with many providers struggling to achieve growth and facing revenue declines across their connectivity portfolios. The enterprise market is positioned for growth, with GlobalData expecting the business mobile market to grow 5.5% by 2029. Though service providers continue to battle it out to grow their mobile market share, with the country having three enterprise challenger brands including Aussie Broadband, Macquarie Telecom, and now Vocus all leveraging Optus’s mobile network by trying to break the incumbent’s stronghold of approximately 65% of the business mobile market. While all challengers have struggled to make a meaningful impact in the market, to date, all only offer basic mobile connectivity instead of delivering outcome-driven solutions that enterprise customers increasingly expect, such as IoT, asset tracking, and other advanced 5G innovations like network slicing.

Summary Bullets:

• Tata Communications will collaborate with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a high-capacity network connecting three major AWS infrastructure locations in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

• In a growing trend, more telecom providers are building high-capacity terrestrial networks to meet the growing demand in bandwidth contributed by the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud.

Tata Communications has announced a new partnership with AWS to build and deploy a high-capacity national terrestrial network backbone, making a significant move in transforming the country’s digital infrastructure evolution. This strategic collaboration between the two supports the continued rise in demand for data-intensive workloads driven by AI and cloud adoption. In what is becoming an increasing trend among global telecom operators, with more carriers investing substantial funds to expand, or upgrade their terrestrial networks to meet future data traffic demands, contributed by data-hungry workloads such as AI/ML, while future-proofing their networks to meet the requirements of their hyperscalers and enterprise customers.

The strategic collaboration will see Tata Communications connect the hyperscaler’s three main infrastructure facilities located throughout the country with two data centers located in Mumbai and Hyderabad, and its Direct Connect and Edge Network infrastructure located in Chennai. According to the companies, the new fiber network will feature express routes designed to deliver ultra-low latency, which is viewed as essential for compute-intensive AI and ML workloads. With the fiber build tipped to be the largest construction project for the company with an estimated cable length of 18,000km boasting a network capacity of 7.2Tbps with a projected completion date by the end of 2026. The partnership will also enable businesses nationwide to build, train and deploy scalable AI applications, driving innovation across critical sectors such as healthcare, finance and education.

With more global telecom operators enhancing and modernizing their terrestrial networks to support the increased data traffic contributed by the growth of AI, telcos have significantly increased their capital expenditure, upgrading their network capabilities, including using modern technologies, such as built-in AI, ML, and cognitive computing. The trend has been gaining traction over the last 12 months. In the US, Lumen announced it would increase its capital expenditure by 30% to $4.2 billion to meet its intercity needs as the carrier looks to almost quadruple its fiber network in the coming years while launching its Private Connectivity Fabric, a custom network that includes dedicated access to existing fiber in the Lumen network providing the network capacity, performance, stability and speed primarily targeted at hyperscalers and data center providers. Additionally, Zayo have announced that they plan to construct 5,000 miles of new route miles to be completed with construction well under way connecting Phoenix to Tucson, and Chicago to both Minneapolis and Columbus. Zayo has also completed a full 400G upgrade of its North American network. Looking further abroad, Orange is enhancing its fiber backbone across Europe and Africa to further support its growing workloads from major tech giants, while in the Asia-Pacific region, Telstra is expanding its terrestrial fiber network in Australia while strengthening its international fiber routes between key global routes, including intra-Asia, trans-Pacific, and Asia to Australia.

As the demand for faster and more reliable connectivity intensifies, carriers are accelerating their efforts to upgrade and future-proof their networks. With the rise of AI being a key driver behind this shift, it is placing unprecedented demand on carriers’ network infrastructure due to the massive data volumes, low latency requirements and processing needs of AI workloads. AI will continue to reshape network performance expectations. To stay competitive, more telcos will look to invest in high-capacity, intelligent networks to support the next wave of digital transformation.