Alcatel-Lucent will assist Nextgen Group, a supplier of network connectivity, data center facilities and cloud services in Australia, will roll out a 2000 km undersea cable system between Darwin and Port Hedland, in North West Australia.
The project would provide support to Australia’s offshore oil and gas industry, said Alcatel-Lucent in a statement.
The subsea fiber-optic cable system will offer data and voice communication services to the INPEX Ichthys Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and Shell Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) projects located in the Browse Basin off North West Australia.
Work will commence in May 2014 and is scheduled for completion in 2016.
The Prelude and Ichthys projects will contribute equally to the construction of the system, which will be built by Alcatel-Lucent and will be owned and operated by the Nextgen Group.
The system has a design capacity of more than 3.2 terabits-per-second (Tbit/s), with the potential to be upgraded to more than 32 Tbit/s.
The project will also establish an alternative backhaul path to Perth supporting high capacity voice and data services on land.
