News

South Australia has officially welcomed the arrival of the world’s largest-capacity cable laying ship, Ile d’Yeu to Adelaide to start construction on our state's first-ever subsea data cable.

The data cable, which will connect to Adelaide at West Beach will significantly enhance South Australia’s digital connection to other Australian and global markets.

The new system will deliver faster, more secure and reliable data capacity to grow the state’s economy and more jobs in data intensive industries like defence, space, AI and advanced manufacturing.

Australian digital infrastructure company SUBCO is building the new $400 million, 5,000 km SMAP (Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth) cable system.

Digital connectivity is critical for South Australia, and will importantly assist key innovation, machine learning and artificial intelligence development opportunity in the state.

The SMAP submarine can provide a 400 Terabit-per-second using a subsea 16 fibre pair fully armoured long haul cable system.

This high-speed connection underpins the continuing development of sovereign capability in AI and Machine Learning as well as other critical technology and digital services.

It will also support the South Australian Government’s desire to see large capacity data centre development in the state, leveraging our state’s significant renewable energy resources, and nation leading planning system.

Adelaide is home to the world-renowned Australian Institute for Machine Learning, with the South Australian Government being a foundational investor.

The South Australian Government is also a foundational investor in Responsible AI Research Centre, a national collaboration between CSIRO, University of Adelaide the Government of South Australia.

South Australia has appointed an Assistant Minister for AI and the Digital Economy and has established Australia’s first Office for AI earlier this year.