Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC)

Australia-Singapore Cable (ASC) is a 4,600 km submarine fiber-optic system connecting Perth (Australia), Flying Fish Cove (Christmas Island), Anyer (Indonesia), and Tanah Merah (Singapore). Built by Alcatel Submarine Networks under a ~US$170 million contract, the cable entered service in September 2018 with a design capacity of 40 Tbps across 4 fiber pairs — later upgraded to 60 Tbps in 2019. Originally a 50/50 joint venture between Nextgen Networks and Vocus Communications, Vocus acquired full ownership in April 2017. ASC provides a critical low-latency route between Australia and Southeast Asia, reducing round-trip times compared to older paths via Guam or Japan. GeoCables monitors this cable using distributed RIPE Atlas probes, with anomaly detection triggered when RTT exceeds the historical baseline threshold.