Tasmania's existing fibre connections to mainland Australia are showing their age. The three cables currently in service were built in 1995, 2002 and 2004 respectively. All three are unrepeated systems with limited bandwidth, and none were designed for the demands that modern connectivity places on critical infrastructure.
Bernacchi-1 is a new 180km subsea cable branch extending from SUBCO's SMAP cable system, landing at Bellbuoy Beach in northern Tasmania. It represents the first new fibre connection to the state in over two decades.
In this video, SUBCO Founder & Co-CEO Bevan Slattery walks through the project - why it's happening now, why Bellbuoy Beach was chosen as the landing site, what construction involves, and what it means for Tasmania.
Why now
SUBCO first approached the Tasmanian Government about a Bass Strait branch cable back in 2014. The challenge was always the business case - building subsea infrastructure to a market of Tasmania's size requires the right combination of anchor customers and government support to get over the line.
That combination came together with Firmus signing on as an anchor customer.
A different class of cable
The existing cables into Tasmania are all unrepeated - they rely on a single laser to push the signal across the Bass Strait without amplification. The further the signal travels, the less bandwidth is available. This puts a hard ceiling on what those systems can deliver.
Bernacchi-1 is fundamentally different. It branches from the SMAP cable system, which uses subsea repeaters to amplify the optical signal approximately every 90km. The result is that Bernacchi-1 will offer more available capacity than all three existing cables combined.
Minimal footprint
One of the questions the local community rightly asks is what construction looks like on the ground. The short answer: not much.
The cable comes ashore via horizontal directional drilling (HDD) from a private property at 122 Bellbuoy Beach Road. A steel bore pipe runs approximately 750 metres out to the seabed, at least 10-12 metres below the surface the entire way. The cable itself is about the diameter of a 50-cent coin - double-armoured fibre optic, not a power cable. No beach excavation, no ploughing of the seabed, no disruption to dunes or public reserve areas.
Once construction is complete, the beach manhole is buried a metre underground and turfed over. The next scheduled inspection will be in about 10 years. The property effectively becomes a no-development site for the 25-year life of the cable.
Connecting into Tasmania
The cable landing connects via a short front-haul to a cable station - in this case, a small telecommunications shelter roughly 7 x 3.5 metres. The power requirement for the entire system is under 2 kilowatts.
From there, the terrestrial network is no different to what any other telco builds - standard conduit following existing routes and connecting into established fibre networks to reach Launceston, Hobart and the NBN points of interconnect. The focus is on delivering connectivity to government, mobile operators, enterprise and the NBN - introducing competitive tension into a market that has historically had limited options for mainland backhaul.
What this means for Tasmania
The benefits sit across three areas.
Resilience is the most immediate. When both Telstra links into Tasmania went down simultaneously several years ago, the state was effectively offline - broadband, mobile, emergency services, government systems. A third independent fibre path materially reduces that risk.
Competition should follow. A new entrant into the market creates pricing pressure that should flow through to cheaper broadband and digital services for Tasmanian consumers and businesses.
And capacity opens doors for new industries. Tasmania is already home to significant science and research activity - Antarctic research, oceanography, the CSIRO research vessel Investigator based out of Hobart. Reliable high-capacity connectivity makes the state a more viable base for data-intensive industries.
Bernacchi-1 is expected to be ready for service mid-027.