JASURAUS was a 5.332 Gbit/s, 2,800 km

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...

submarine telecommunications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried te ...

that connected

Port Hedland A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ha ...

, Australia, to Jakarta,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, with a further interconnection to the

APCN APCN or Asia-Pacific Cable Network is a submarine telecommunications cable system linking nine Asian countries. It has landing points in: * Petchaburi, Thailand *Mersing, Malaysia *Changi, Singapore *Ancol, Indonesia *Lantau, Hong Kong *Batanga ...

and which was decommissioned in 2012. The cable owners of the JASURAUS system that became part of the APCN were Optus, Telstra and Indosat. They joined the APCN consortium by transferring 90% of the JASURAUS capacity for 10% on the APCN. JASURAUS was conceived in 1995 as an additional link from Australia to provide telephony services connected to the world, with a design life of 25 years and at a cost of A$160 million. The name was derived from a concatenation of the originally planned sites of 'Jakarta' - 'Surabaya' - 'Australia'. However, the Surabaya landing was abandoned before project commencement, though the name remained. The landing point in Indonesia was at Ancol Cable Station. The final landing point chosen at the Australian end was in Port Hedland, a number of options were looked into for the cable station including a secure concrete duct to the existing South Hedland exchange 11 km inland utilising the vacant 2nd floor which had previously been used for the Telstra Manual Assistance Centre. The PFE, SLTE and MUX equipment was finally commissioned in a new purpose-built building located adjacent to the Cooke Point exchange. It featured many redundant systems, including a new physically diverse fibre to connect to the existing inland fibre route to Perth. At the time of being ready for service in 1997, the main cables linking Australia to the world were Tasman2 ( Sydney to

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about I ...

connecting with PacRimEast and continuing to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only ...

) and

PacRimWest PacRimWest was a twin-pair 560Mbit/s optical submarine telecommunications cable which served as Australia's main link to the world along with its partner cables Tasman2 (connecting Australia to New Zealand) and PacRimEast (connecting New Zealand t ...

(Sydney to

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic ce ...

). Each system consisted of two fibre pairs delivering a total of 560 Mbit/s bandwidth per system. Jasuraus was designed to deliver a dramatic increase in network capacity, and was able to carry nearly 60,000 phone calls simultaneously at a data rate of 5.332 Gbit/s. JASURAUS was overtaken in 2000 by the 40 Gbit/s SeaMeWe3 and 320 Gbit/s Southern Cross Cable Network, just 3 years after start-up. The new systems provided stiff competition for JASURAUS, due to their higher bandwidth and easy access to systems located in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, and ongoing economic concerns proved to be an issue for the primary operators

Telstra Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets voice, mobile, internet access, pay television and other products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX ...

and

Optus Singtel Optus Pty Limited (commonly referred to as Optus) is an Australian Telecommunications in Australia, telecommunications company headquartered in Macquarie Park, New South Wales, Australia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore, Si ...

throughout the life of the cable. While JASURAUS was capable of supporting an upgrade to 20 Gbit/s, such agreements would have required consensus from the JASURAUS operators and APCN's owners. Proposed upgrades were further hampered due to the high cost charged by

to third parties for the provision of

IP transit Internet transit is the service of allowing network traffic to cross or "transit" a computer network, usually used to connect a smaller Internet service provider (ISP) to the larger Internet. Technically, it consists of two bundled services: * The ...

and

Leased line A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by ...

services from Port Hedland to

Perth Perth is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and largest city of the Australian states and territories of Australia, state of Western Australia. It is the list of cities in Australia by population, fourth most populous city in Aust ...

, which resulted in decreased demand from carriers as there was no alternative communications path out of Port Hedland. In the absence of upgrades beyond its initial bandwidth, JASURAUS saw minimal further use. Its remaining years were spent largely idle, with the cable retained as a backup link out of Australia and as an additional source of connectivity for

AARNet AARNet (Australian Academic and Research Network) provides Internet services to the Australian education and research communities and their research partners. AARNet built the Internet in Australia. In 1995, the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Co ...

. According to industry sources, JASURAUS was decommissioned in 2012.

References

External links

Alcatel Lucent Information Page

Big Pipes: Connecting Western Australia to the Global Knowledge Economy

{{Australia–Indonesia relations Submarine communications cables in the Indian Ocean Australia–Indonesia relations 1997 establishments in Australia 1997 establishments in Indonesia 2012 disestablishments in Australia 2012 disestablishments in Indonesia

See also

References

External links