Australian telecom Vocus is building a 4,000-kilometer fiber link between Brisbane and Darwin to serve hyperscaler, neocloud, and enterprise demand.

Australian telecoms company Vocus has announced plans to construct a 4,000km fiber route connecting Brisbane to Darwin, the second project under its Australian Digital Infrastructure Platform (ADIP). The ducted long-haul route will link Brisbane, Townsville, and Darwin, accommodating up to 3,456 fiber strands and expected to be ready for service in 2030. Vocus has already begun route planning, technical design, and customer engagement.

ADIP aims to address Australia's growing fiber capacity requirements driven by AI, cloud, and digital infrastructure investment. Market research commissioned by Vocus estimates that Australia's data center capacity will triple by 2030, largely due to AI workloads. The platform will deliver thousands of new fiber route kilometers, thousands of new fiber pairs, and hundreds of additional terabits of capacity across terrestrial and subsea networks.

"Australia is in a period of unprecedented investment in AI infrastructure, data centers, and international connectivity, requiring exponential investment in new terrestrial and subsea fiber networks," said Andres Irlando, chief executive officer of Vocus. "Vocus launched ADIP to build the digital infrastructure Australia needs to compete globally in AI. Northern Australia is becoming a critical region for AI, cloud, and digital services, with Queensland and the Northern Territory emerging as important data center precincts and gateways connecting Australia with Asia and the United States."

The announcement comes months after Vocus quadrupled capacity on its Adelaide-Perth 2 (AP2) optical route, one of Australia's most critical long-haul fiber corridors.