The Coral Sea Cable System (CS2)
The Coral Sea Cable System links both PNG and Solomon Islands back to the major East Coast Internet Hub at Sydney. Each country uses two fibre pairs on the system from their respective capitals, Port Moresby and Honiara to Sydney, giving each country up to 20 Terabits/s in capacity.
The Sydney Landing party is Telstra. The system will be installed in their Paddington Exchange in Sydney. The submarine cable lands at Tamarama Beach in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs and utilises Telstra land duct across Sydney to Paddington. The physical cable comprises a four fibre optic pair core sheathed in the one cable from Australia over 2500km to a Branching Unit in the Coral Sea, where the four pair core is then split into two cables each containing two fibre pair cores that make their way to Landing Stations in Port Moresby and Honiara.
The construction project was co-funded by the Governments of the Commonwealth of Australia, PNG and Solomon Islands under the terms of an MOU signed on 11th July 2011. Australia grant funded 66.7% of the total cost with the remainder being contributed by Solomon Islands and PNG.
Vocus Communications were the prime contractor under an Engineering, Procurement and Construction Contract (EPC) that was signed on June 18th 2018. Vocus Communications sub-contracted Alcatel Submarine Networks (France) to construct and install the cable system. The construction of the system was completed on 29th November 2019.
The CS2 cable is owned and operated by the Coral Sea Cable Company Pty Limited in Australia. This company is owned equally by The Commonwealth of Australia, SISCC and PNG DataCo. PNG DataCo and SISCC have each been granted Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) over two fibre pairs for the full lifetime of the Cable system (25 years) by The Coral Sea Cable Company.