The Australia–Japan Cable, or AJC, is a 12,700 kmsubmarine telecommunications cable system linking Australia and Japan via Guam[2] 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.[3]
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.
