Australia’s fibre map just got longer. Telstra launched the Perth-Sydney route of its Aura Network on October 7, 2026, creating the longest route in its national intercity fibre network and extending high-capacity connectivity between Western Australia, the eastern states, and international markets.
The activation forms part of Telstra’s broader $1.8 billion investment in Australia’s digital infrastructure. It marks another build milestone: 9,000 kilometres of the planned 14,000 kilometres are now constructed, compared with more than 8,500 kilometres of built fibre as of July 2026.
Telstra designed Aura to provide up to 35 times more fibre capacity per path than conventional fibre routes, with greater resilience built into the network. Its architecture can support up to 6.3 times greater terabits-per-second capacity than existing industry-standard fibre network architecture — because apparently ordinary cables were feeling underqualified.
Telstra builds a longer path for cloud and AI
As of September 2026, Aura included the Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne Coastal, Sydney-Canberra Central, Sydney-Perth Direct, and Adelaide-Wilmington Direct routes. The Perth-Sydney activation adds another long-distance connection to a network aimed at cloud, AI, and digital infrastructure providers, including Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft’s Australian data centres connect through the Aura Network. Organizations can purchase access to a dedicated part of the network, customize and scale their capacity, or choose a fully managed service through three products: Aura Wavelength, Aura Direct Spectrum, and Aura Dark Fibre.
The network uses two separate fibre pathways. An express path uses Corning SMF-28 ULL with Advanced Bend, while a foundation path uses Prysmian BBA2-LL low-loss fibre; Perth’s subsea connection points reach Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Sydney.
Telstra has already tested what this design can carry. A desktop simulation of the Sydney-to-Melbourne ultra-low-loss express link set a fibre capacity benchmark of more than 83 Tbps per fibre pair in May 2024, giving the network a capacity target that looks less like a road upgrade and more like a new transport system.
Meta takes the same capacity fight underwater
Meta announced its Petal subsea cable on September 21, 2026, linking the U.S. and France across about 4,300 miles. The cable is expected to enter service in 2029 and will carry 1 petabit per second, or about 125,000 gigabytes per second — double the capacity of today’s most advanced transoceanic cables.
Petal uses two-core fiber, placing two light paths inside each strand. Meta says the cable will be the first to deliver petabit-scale capacity across an ocean, a claim with the useful advantage of being measured in numbers rather than launch-event fog.
NEC and Sumitomo Electric Industries are developing Petal, while French telecom Orange is handling its landing on France’s Atlantic coast. The project expands Meta’s subsea network, which reaches six continents and includes more than 20 subsea cable projects touching every continent except Antarctica.
Meta announced Project Waterworth in February 2025. The system will stretch more than 31,000 miles, connecting the U.S., Brazil, South Africa, India, and other regions across five continents, with segments laid as deep as about 4.3 miles below the surface.
Waterworth will be owned by Meta, making it only Meta’s third solely owned cable. Meta’s subsea projects do not disclose costs, but Waterworth could top $10 billion, while Meta expects capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion in 2026.
Meta’s 2Africa system, whose core was completed in 2025, circles the African continent and connects to Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia. It lands in 33 countries and can reach 3 billion people; Meta also partnered with Microsoft and Telxius on the MAREA cable between Virginia and Spain, completed in 2017.
Telstra is extending the fibre routes feeding Australia’s digital infrastructure, while Meta is adding ocean-spanning capacity for global systems. The projects serve the same demand from different directions: cloud services, AI infrastructure, and data flows now require fibre networks built at continental and planetary scale.
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