The Australia Singapore Cable has been switched on for use ahead of its scheduled 14 September service date, following a major disruption on the Sea-Me-We3 submarine cable between Perth and Singapore.
ASC owner Vocus Group said in a statement on Wednesday that it had initiated an emergency cutover of services that ran on the SMW-3 to the ASC to minimise customer impacts due to the issues with SMW-3.
On 29 August, as iTWire reported , Vocus Group managing director and chief executive Kevin Russell said the Vocus team was finalising its testing phase for the cable system to be ready for service on 14 September, when customers would be able to enjoy the “newest, fastest and most direct connectivity route into Asia”.
Vocus Group chief technology officer Simon Smith gave the go-ahead for the ASC to be used, Wednesday's statement said.
“After consulting our team [that is] conducting final testing, we are confident that ASC is ready to provide reliable and effective services to mitigate the effect of the SMW-3 outage,” said Simon.“Even though we had announced Vocus ASC Ready-for-Service on 14 September, our priority is ensuring our customers continue to access the connectivity they require.
"The SMW-3 outage has forced our hand, but our testing on ASC is ahead of schedule and we are confident enough to press ASC into early service.”
Vocus said its engineers would continue to monitor re-routed traffic from SMW-3 as they worked to complete work on the ASC.
No impact was anticipated for customers who were contracted to start using the ASC on 14 September.
The SMW-3 outage was said to reinforce the need for the ASC to support businesses in Australia and the Asian region.
“The requirement for reliable, high-performance connectivity into Asia will not abate,” said Simon.
“SMW-3 has unfortunately suffered many unexpected service interruptions in the past few years and Vocus ASC will be a welcome addition, being a newer and more technologically advanced cable, and able to offer a more reliable service than SMW-3.
"It is highly fortunate that our ASC project has been so advanced to be able to swing into action, in an emergency capacity.”
Vocus is a member of the consortium that owns SMW-3; an ETA is not yet available as to when its services will be restored.
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