Nextgen Group has upped its investment in a telecommunications cable servicing resources companies in Western Australia’s north-west.
In May, the company announced it was building a $120 million subsea cable to service customers in the region and provide connectivity to LNG fields including the Browse and Bonaparte basins.
At the time of the announcement, group chief executive Peter McGrath told Business News the project would be funded with equal investment from both Shell and Inpex, which would be foundations customers of the 2,000-kilometre long subsea cable.
The infrastructure will connect Port Hedland and Darwin, enabling Shell and Inpex to utilise the infrastructure for the Ichthys and Prelude LNG Projects.
Today, Nextgen Networks managing director David Yuile said the company had increased planned investment and added a further eight terabytes of capability to support additional customer demand.
He said manufacture of the cable would begin in France next week, which marked a significant milestone for Nextgen.
“Our decision to build this major infrastructure project has been confirmed with a number of new customers signed to access the system,” Mr Yuile said.
Cable manufacture is expected to take around six months, with the cable being laid in the latter half of 2015.
Customers would then be able to access capacity by 2016.
Today’s announcement comes following Telstra’s announcement last week that it was also building a subsea cable in the Pilbara.