New milestone reached in Intercity Fibre Network build
Footage: Globe featuring map of Australia, with a rapidly moving animated pink line depicting all the capital cities the first fibre optic cable will reach. The footage transitions to Brendon Riley, CEO of Telstra InfraCo, at a construction site.
Footage Text: Construction of nearly 14,000 km of fibre. Connecting mainland capital cities with the latest high speed fibre.
Audio – Brendon Riley: Telstra InfraCo’s intercity fibre project is the biggest investment Telstra has made in terrestrial fibre and infrastructure in the last 30 years. It’s designed to connect the capital cities with the latest high-speed fibre.
Footage: Montage of dozers laying fibre optic cables in pink and blue. The camera zooms in on the pink fibre, followed by a cut to Kathryn Jones, Executive National Infrastructure Projects in InfraCo, also on site, who is on the construction field working. The blue fibre is then shown. Montage of remote Australian landscapes.
Voiceover – Kathryn Jones: The D9 dozers are laying a pink and a blue fibre. And the pink fibre is the express fibre, high-capacity low-latency resilient fibre that the customers such as Hyperscalers and carriers are really keen to utilise. The other fibre which is the blue foundation fibre that’s where we’re going to provide additional capacity into those remote and regional areas.
Footage: Construction workers in a national park. The landscape changes to scenes of forests and parks.
Voiceover: There’s a lot of consultation that needs to happen before we actually even start constructing. We need to talk to the traditional owners. We need their approval. We need the approval from the national parks, state forests and also, private landholders.
Footage: A montage of tractors and workers operating in various terrains, on both land and sea. Brendon Riley is briefly shown, followed by tractors continuing work in the field.
Voiceover: One of the complexities of the project is just the terrain we need to traverse. And then there’s just weather events, floods, fires. You know, they’re happening all around us as we’re trying to build it. So it’s a slow process.
Footage: A first person perspective of someone working on fibre hardware.
Voiceover: Sustainability has been at the forefront of the design. The Telstra InfraCo fibre design team worked in conjunction with Prysmian who are manufacturing the fibre in their plant at Dee Why in Sydney.
Footage: A dozer lays the pink and blue fibres as tractors move across the fields.
Voiceover: It’s about the circumference of a five cent piece. That’s a lot smaller than the previous fibre that we would have laid into the ground. That means there’s less plastic, substantially less plastic.
Footage: Montage of server racks.
Voiceover: We’ve got to have telecommunications infrastructure that supports not only the industries of today but the industries of tomorrow.
Footage: Scenes of construction at sea, server racks, city roads, greenhouses, and tiny homes.
Voiceover: Australia needs this capacity to service the subsea cables that are coming in. It’s required to support the next generation of advanced tech industries like AI, data centres, all of those data intensive use cases will require this superfast intercity fibre.
Footage: Montage of tiny homes, people working on some hardware, tractors on the field, sea and landscapes of forests.
Voiceover: You know, one of the reasons that you work at Telstra is to be able to do amazing projects like this. This will serve the nation for a generation to come. I think that’s something we can all be super proud of.
Footage: Zooms out from Australia, then zooms out to the globe.
Footage: Telstra InfraCo logo.
Telstra InfraCo’s Intercity Fibre Network project passed another milestone in June 2024 as we completed around 1800 kilometres of fibre construction.
Our recent progress has demonstrated the complexity of building national fibre infrastructure in Australia. Crews have been active in major metro areas, remote deserts and mountainous country.
Crossing the iconic Sydney Harbour
Last month, Telstra InfraCo crews working in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge laid approximately 1 kilometre of fibre optic cable across the bed of Sydney Harbour between Dawes Point and Blues Point.
This is a milestone for our network as it connects the Sydney CBD to the St Leonards exchange on the lower north shore. The St Leonards exchange is the meeting point of the Sydney to Canberra, Sydney to Brisbane and Sydney to Perth intercity fibre routes.
The connection at St Leonards will help us as we aim to get the Sydney to Canberra route live in the next twelve months. It’s also a fundamental step in our progress on the other routes.
Navigating complexities
While this is not the only water crossing in the project, it was one of the most complex. Sydney Harbour has busy shipping routes and we had to work around Sydney’s nighttime VIVID festival as we put cable through the CBD. We spent months planning this operation, and coordinating with a range of stakeholders to ensure we could lay the cable without disrupting the city too much. Divers helped lay the cable, while we coordinated with the Harbour Master to manage marine traffic.
We also had to work with Prysmian, the cable manufacturer, to have specialised armour-plated cable made that would survive the underwater conditions.
Building continues across Australia's diverse landscape
Sydney Harbour is just one of many places where we are active in building the Intercity Dark Fibre network. We currently have 15 live construction sites on five routes across the country. Some of these crews work in the most rugged and remote parts of the country.
We’re working across the Nullarbor and we’re also doing work in the Snowy Mountain capital of Cooma, outside of Canberra. Such diverse environments provide completely different challenges for our teams. But they are tackling the complexities of the build with passion and ingenuity.
We’re connecting Australian communities to each other and the world
Telstra’s intercity fibre project is a significant national infrastructure build to support Australia’s digital future. It’s an investment into our nation’s growth, connectivity and prosperity that responds to the growing demand for high capacity, ultra-low latency, reliable and resilient fibre networks.
We are investing up to $1.6 billion into several key fibre initiatives: the Intercity Dark Fibre Network project, expanding the fibre footprint in the Pilbara, and partnering with Viasat for the Viasat-3 ground network. When complete, the network will deliver almost 14,000 kilometres of high-capacity, ultra-low latency fibre. It will connect Australia’s major capital cities from north to south and east to west and provide access points to connect to regional and remote locations.
Expanding fibre footprint and connectivity
Together, our Intercity Dark Fibre Network routes will connect the east coast of Australia to the west coast, seamlessly transitioning the dry to the wet and beyond, via Telstra’s extensive international subsea cable network.
The cornerstone of our network is the construction of our dual fibre paths between capital cities – an express path (our pink cable) and a foundation path (our blue cable).
The express path is designed for those seeking high-speed, long-distance connections. The foundation path provides access points to connect to regional and remote locations.
Our foundation path is an important part of our network building story. That’s why the network infrastructure we are creating will allow for future connectivity to the regional areas it passes through. These network access points enable digital connectivity that can help bring economic investment into regional areas.
More routes are on the way
We are in the planning stage of another five routes. One of these is the critical Darwin to Adelaide route which is already attracting significant interest because of the important connection it offers to the rest of the world.
Stay tuned for more updates as our Intercity Dark Fibre Network grows daily.
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