Late last month, HyperOne, another startup from Australian entrepreneur Bevan Slattery, announced that it had started building a 20,000-kilometer fiber backbone in Australia. The company also announced that it had awarded AFLGlobal a contract to supply at least the initial phase of fibre optics. HyperOne is expected to complete its initial deployment by the end of this year.

Phase 1A of the project will deploy a 2,300km diversified fibre-optic loop connecting Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. AFL Global will produce 7,600km of fibre optics for the project, which the company will produce at its Melbourne plant.

Slattery founded several companies that operate sea cable networks. Last February, he announced his intention to expand to terrestrial networks and said the backbone network would be designed to exceed 10,000Tbps.

Slattery says AFL Global’s cables will maximize environmental protection. “The cable will have three layers of protection including a termite sheath, a rodent inner sheath and a non-metallic armour to provide additional protection from Australia’s harsh soil conditions. HyperOne will not only be Australia’s first hyper-scale backbone, it will also be Australia’s first 100% piped or armoured backbone,” he explained.