Brisbane, Australia – 25 June 2026 – SUBCO today announced Ready for Service (RFS) of SMAP, its 5,000 km Sydney–Melbourne–Adelaide–Perth hypercable. The milestone delivers the single largest transcontinental capacity upgrade Australia has seen in nearly 25 years.

“SMAP going live is the culmination of more than three years of hard work, and a landmark moment for Australia’s digital future. For the first time, the nation’s four major cities are connected by a single, fully armoured, high-capacity subsea system – delivering the resilience and scale that Australia’s digital economy, and its role as a connectivity hub for the Indo-Pacific, demands. This isn’t just an upgrade; it’s a generational reset for Australian infrastructure.” Bevan Slattery, Founder & Co-CEO, SUBCO

With 16 fibre pairs, full armouring, and space division multiplexing (SDM) technology, SMAP delivers more than 400 Tbps of capacity – making it one of the world’s largest undersea cable systems and Australia’s first hypercable. The system provides genuine route diversity and resilience across the Sydney–Perth corridor, including the first submarine cable to land in both Melbourne and Adelaide.

For SMAP’s foundation customers, RFS marks the culmination of a shared journey. Some of SMAP’s foundation customers include 5GN, Swoop, Aussie Broadband, Cloudflare, GSL, Host Universal, Kinetix, Leaptel, Megaport, Telair and Virtutel.

“By coming on board early as a foundational customer of SMAP, we’re locking in the capacity, performance and resilience our customers will need for the next decade and beyond,” said Brad Parker, CTO at Aussie Broadband. “The hyperscale capacity and added redundancy allows us to move massive volumes of traffic between our capital city points-of-presence with lower latency, higher availability and far more headroom for growth.”

Damian Matacz, Director, Network Strategy at Cloudflare said: “A better Internet is built on resilient infrastructure. SMAP gives Cloudflare diverse new domestic paths across Australia – strengthening our network and elevating the experience for everyone our customers serve.”

Brendan Halley, Host Universal, said: “SUBCO have always been forward-thinking in how they design and operate their cable systems. SMAP is a standout example of that, delivering the resilient, sovereign infrastructure Australia needs. We’re proud to continue our relationship as a foundation partner.”

James Howell, Director at Kinetix, said: “We would like to thank Bevan and the team for bringing this amazing capability to Australia to support continued growth of capacity and low latency across this great country.”

David Allen, Managing Director at Virtutel, said: “It just ticks every single box for redundancy and for additional network builds for the future.”

Matthew Enger, CEO at Leaptel, said: “We’re rapidly growing, particularly in WA, and SMAP gave us a clear pathway for both resilience and capacity.”

Edward Wenman, Managing Director at Telair, said: “Becoming a SUBCO foundation customer on SMAP is a significant move in future-proofing Telair’s network and the services we deliver to our customers. It positions us to meet rising demand for capacity and resilience well into the future, with a trusted partner.”

Joe Demase, Managing Director at 5GN, said: “We’ve had a long history with SUBCO and buying capacity with Indigo Central and West. Competitively priced, good service and another option, another route is always good to have.”

Tom Berryman, CTO at Swoop, said: “Our partnership with SUBCO is built on a shared commitment to performance, reliability and customer outcomes. The team has consistently demonstrated deep technical expertise and a collaborative approach, helping support our network growth and long-term connectivity strategy. As a foundation customer of SMAP, we’re excited to continue working together as the network expands and creates new opportunities for customers across Australia.”

Tasmania Branch

Earlier this month, SUBCO announced extension of the SMAP cable into Tasmania, delivering genuine route diversity to the state for the first time and ending dependence on Victorian termination points. Direct access to SMAP will provide the low-latency, high-capacity connectivity that large-scale GPU workloads require, a critical enabler for the AI infrastructure ecosystem rapidly taking shape in the state.

The Tasmanian branch is expected to be operational Q2 2027.