
australia-japan cable

the australia-japan cable, or ajc, is a 12,700 km submarine telecommunications cable system linking australia and japan via guam that became operational in 2001. it had an original design capacity of 640 gbit/s, but was initially equipped to use only 80 gbit/s of this capacity. in april 2008 a capacity upgrade was completed, bringing equipped capacity to 240 gbit/s. design capacity was also increased to 1000 gbit/s. further upgrades will increase equipped capacity to meet increasing demand.
the ajc network employs a collapsed loop design that features diverse landings in australia, guam and japan and diverse routing at water depths less than 4000m. this design reduces cost by using a common sheath in deep water, where risk of failure is low, but provides redundancy to mitigate risk in shallower waters and in the landing stations.
the network supports a range of access interfaces, including sdh at stm1, stm4, stm16 and stm64 levels, 2.5g clear, direct wavelength access, gigabit ethernet and 10 gigabit ethernet. a range of protection options are available, including sdh span and ring protection and 1:n wavelength redundancy.
the cable has a design life to 2026.
ownership.
ajc is jointly owned by telstra, bt, verizon business and softbank.

