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 Total Capacity stood at 40 Gb/s per fibre pair.
2007 Upgrade Project
2014 Upgraded to 100 Gb/s Channels
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
Total Capacity between Australia and Guam is at 4,970Gb/s
Total Capacity between Guam and Japan is at 5,240 Gb/s