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Timeline of Construction and Upgrades

The Australia Japan Cable Network (AJCN) was established in 2000 as a private cable company to design, construct, market and operate a 12,700km submarine fibre optic cable network from Sydney, Australia, to Japan via Guam.

The business was funded by a combination of equity capital from the founding shareholders, in conjunction with a project finance debt facility provided by a consortium of banks.  A significant proportion of the debt was secured by pre sales, with the remainder repaid through subsequent capacity sales.

The construction phase of the project was completed under budget in December 2001, with an equipped capacity of 40+40 Gbit/s - using at the time, then state of the art 10 Gbit/s submarine technology.

The AJCN has since been upgraded with the addition of 40G technology in mid-2012, with the addition of 100G technology in late 2013 and early 2014. 

During 2018 AJCN was upgraded with latest optical coherent technology and equipped with some 5,000Gbit/s capacity between Australia-Guam-Japan. The design capacity of the AJCN is currently some 10,000Gbit/s Australia-Guam-Japan with present day coherent transmission technology.

2001 Installation of the Cable System

The Australasian project began with a 40 G bit/s installation, with each of two fibre pairs linking Australia, Guam and Japan. Each fibre pair supported fully protected and unprotected, synchronous digital hierarchy capacity.

The Total Capacity stood at 40 Gb/s per fibre pair.

2007 Upgrade Project

The AJCN was upgraded with an additional 12 x 10 Gb/s on each fibre pair to support direct high speed links between Australia, Guam and Japan. Total Capacity 160 Gb/s per fibre pair.

2014 Upgraded to 100 Gb/s Channels

In 2014 The AJCN retired all of the 10 GB/s Channels to make way for the 100 GB/s channels. A total of 160Gb/s pf 10G channels were removed from per fibre pairs and replaced with 7 x 100Gb/s channels, on each fibre pair between Australia and Guam - with the existing 40G channels remaining.

Total capacity per fibre pair between Australia and Guam stood at 860 Gb/s. A total of 160Gb/s pf 10G channels were removed from per fibre pairs and replaced with 8 x 100Gb/s channels on each fibre pair between Guam and Japan - with the existing 40G channels remaining.

Total capacity per Fibre pair between Australia and Guam stood at 920 Gb/s.

2018 Move to 100 Gb/s Flexible Spectrum Channels

In 2018 The AJCN removed all of the previously installed 100Gb Channels, installing newer 100 Gb/s Super channels - which supported a flexible spectrum grid with tighter channel spacing. Using the Infinite Capacity Engine Architecture (Infinera ICE4), the AJCN made considerably more spectrum available for future upgrades. Through this technology, the network will have the capacity to support up to 10,000 Gb/s per fibre pair.
Utilising the currently installed equipment, the AJCN has a capacity of :
Total Capacity between Australia and Guam is at 4,970Gb/s
Total Capacity between Guam and Japan is at 5,240 Gb/s