PIPE Networks

PPC-1 is PIPE International’s submarine cable connecting Australia to Guam. The cable system spans 7,000 km and initially links Australia directly to Guam, providing international carriers and operators a new and competitive opportunity to interconnect other systems to Australia. In two short years PPC-1 went from a concept to becoming Australia’s first independent submarine cable. It is the single largest investment in Australia’s competitive telecommunications infrastructure since the dot-com era.

PPC-1 is a state-of-the-art ultra-long haul cable system designed and built by Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications (formerly Tyco Telecommunications) to fit PIPE’s needs. It has 2 fibre pairs between Sydney and Guam. It uses the latest Dispersion-flattening technology to minimise the use of compensation fibres in the cable stations.

PPC-1 is working with our partner Infinera to conduct a Submarine Line Termination System upgrade. Leveraging Infinera’s latest ICE6 technology, PPC-1 will be able to boost our per wavelength capacity to 150Gbps and total system capacity over 12Tbps by the end of 2021. We have the confidence further technology development would allow further increase of PPC-1 system capacity and offer crucial cost effective submarine capacity to our customers. Australians will benefit from TPG Telecom's continued investment in this key internet backbone link, which is driven by our insatiable demand for cloud computing and video streaming. Learn more.

In total there are 78 Tyco Telecom manufactured repeaters on the system and they are generally spaced approximately 92 km apart. There are two different types of repeaters within the system. There are 75 standard dual-fibre pair repeaters and there are also three repeaters which have the additional functionality to support the additional fibres out of Sydney. The centre operation wavelength of PPC-1 is 1550 nm. It has a transmission band 28 nm wide and is designed to operate with a wet plant temperature of 4°C.