Summary

  • SUBCO’s published lengths for APX North, APX East-2 and APX West add to 24,100 km, while the same announcement says more than 40,000 km of cable is due to be installed.
  • Branches or a different counting convention may explain the difference. The company has not published the breakdown needed to tell; 24 fibre pairs per system do not explain kilometres by themselves.
  • The three systems remain in the pre-contract stage described in the release: supply and vessel details are being finalized, Contract in Force is expected by early 2027, and completion is targeted for 2029.

The first number is simple; its scope is not

The arithmetic in SUBCO’s announcement is easy to check. It gives APX North a length of 9,500 km, APX East-2 10,000 km, and APX West 4,600 km. Add them once and the result is 24,100 km. Later in the same release, co-CEO Bevan Slattery says the programme involves “over 40,000km of cable to be installed in just over three years.” The public text does not explain the additional distance.

That comparison should be handled carefully. The announcement calls the three figures system lengths, then describes the larger number as cable to be installed. Those may be different measures. APX North includes a route through Guam and switched branching units that would let selected fibre pairs bypass the Guam landing; APX West has branches to Jakarta and Batam. SUBCO may be counting additional physical legs or another scope in the larger figure. The release does not say. It would therefore be premature to call the 40,000 km claim erroneous, just as it would be premature to present it as a reconciled route total.

Each system is described as having 24 fibre pairs. That is a design attribute. It does not turn 24,100 route-kilometres into 40,000, and it does not state how much capacity any customer can buy. A useful reconciliation would show, for each system, the main route length, the measured physical length of every branch or alternative leg, any shared segment counted once or more than once, and the precise meaning of “cable to be installed.” A map alone would help, but a table with consistent units would settle the arithmetic.

A launch announcement is not yet a delivery schedule

The route descriptions are substantial: APX North is intended to link Sydney and Japan via Guam; APX East-2 is planned between Guam and Los Angeles; APX West is to connect Perth and Singapore, with branches to Jakarta and Batam. SUBCO presents the three builds as an answer to rising AI-related demand. That is the company’s demand thesis. The release gives no combined throughput forecast for these systems, no customer allocation of the 24 pairs, and no executed supply or vessel contract for each route.

The timing language matters. SUBCO says it is still finalizing cable-supply and vessel details, expects all three systems to reach Contract in Force (CIF) by early 2027, and targets completion in 2029. CIF is the point at which a plan becomes a more concrete supply commitment. A separate SUBCO project offers a useful comparison without being part of this announcement: APX East, the Sydney–California system, reached CIF on 24 September. SUBCO’s update said long-lead items were on order and set out manufacturing and installation steps. APX East is not APX East-2; the similar names should not blur separate systems or milestones.

The public APX North and APX West pages still say that more information is coming soon. The APX East-2 page states its Guam–Los Angeles endpoints and route-diversity purpose, but not a distance breakdown. That absence does not mean the engineering work is missing. It means an outside customer cannot yet audit the public total against the physical scope.

Why the difference matters to buyers

Kilometres are a scale measure, not a service guarantee. They do not establish which routes are independent, whether a branching option will be installed and switched as described, when capacity will be accepted, or what a buyer may use under contract. A system can have many fibre pairs yet still depend on a limited set of landing, backhaul, power, permitting and vessel choices. Those dependencies must be considered separately from the length of cable announced.

For operators and data-centre planners, the important question is not whether the figure sounds large enough to match AI demand. It is whether a chosen route, capacity product and service date can be tied to an executed contract and an observable delivery path. The AI-factory language in the release points to a large future demand case; it does not substitute for a system-by-system capacity schedule. The company should be able to explain the build’s measurement basis without disclosing customer-confidential terms.

Heng Lu’s Note 69 asks what kind of stability is being protected. Its subject is RIR governance, not SUBCO’s cable programme, but the editorial question travels: measure continuity at the network and customer level. A headline distance is useful only when it can be connected to routes that will be built, tested, accepted and sold.

The next disclosure need not be elaborate. A reconciled length table, a route map distinguishing trunks from branch legs, a CIF date for each system, and milestones for supply, vessels, landing permissions, testing and customer acceptance would turn a large announcement into a schedule that operators can plan against. Until then, the three projects are meaningful proposals with a public measurement gap—not 40,000 km of confirmed, usable capacity.

Sources