Two submarine telecommunications cables landing at Perth developed faults within hours of each other over the weekend, inside the protection zone that exists to stop exactly that happening.
The cables are Indigo West, which runs from Perth to Singapore, and Indigo Central, which runs from Perth to Sydney. Both are owned by SUBCO. The company has reported the matter to the Australian Federal Police.
“The AFP has received a report of crime in relation to this matter," a spokesperson said. "This report is currently being assessed based on the information provided." No charge has been laid and no vessel has been identified by police.”
What the cables suffered are known as shunt faults, where the outer insulation is damaged and seawater reaches the components inside. The usual causes are ships' anchors and fishing gear. SUBCO co-chief and founder Bevan Slattery told iTnews the two incidents happened near each other and at a similar time, and that this "could be a coincidence or an external aggression event." He published a ship tracking chart he described as suspicious or coincidental.
The regional provider AusInternet reported outages beginning on Saturday evening. SUBCO has engaged its marine maintenance operator to allocate a repair vessel, with completion estimated at 26 August, subject to clearance, logistics and weather. That is a little over a fortnight of reduced capacity on both routes at once.
Assessing a report of crime is a step before an investigation, not the investigation itself. The AFP decides at that point whether the material supports opening one. Until it does, the only party examining the fault data is the company that owns the cables.
Indigo West and Indigo Central were built by the same consortium and brought into service together, and they share the approach into Perth. A single event in that corridor can reach both. The redundancy that two cables are meant to provide depends on them not being in the same place at the same time.
The Perth submarine cable protection zone is a legal instrument, not a physical one. It is marked on maritime charts, and under Schedule 3A of the Telecommunications Act 1997 conduct that damages a cable inside a zone carries up to three years in prison and a fine of $40,000. Everything that gives the zone force happens after the cable is already cut.
That sequence has run before in the same water. In August 2021 the AFP charged the master of a cargo ship anchored near the zone over damage to the Australia Singapore Cable about 10 kilometres off City Beach. The repair bill was put at about $1.5 million. The charge was laid ten days after the cable went down.
Australia's international data traffic runs almost entirely over cables of this kind, and the number of separate paths out of Perth is small. Two of them failed on the same weekend.
No federal minister has commented on the faults. The report sits with the AFP, which has not said how long its assessment will take. Repairs are scheduled for 26 August.
