Coral Sea Cable System landing “golden buoy” ceremony (Credit: DFAT/ Peter Morris – Sydney Heads)

An important milestone in the Coral Sea Cable System has been reached: the landing of the cable in Sydney.

Faster, affordable and more reliable communications infrastructure for Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands is now much closer.

The landing of the cable in Sydney caps off two months’ work by the team on board the cable-laying ship, Ile de Brehat, who have laid the 4,700km cable on the sea floor between Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Honiara in Solomon Islands, and Sydney in Australia.

With the cable reaching Sydney, it will soon be connected to power and transmission equipment housed in a landing station in Paddington, west of Tamarama Beach. This is where the cable will be connected into the broader land network in Australia.

The cable landing was celebrated with a ceremony at Tamarama Beach on Wednesday 28 August, attended by Senator the Hon. Marise Payne, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Women, Mr Walter Diamana, Acting Solomon Islands High Commissioner, Mr Leo Oaeke, Acting PNG Consul General in Sydney, and Mr Kevin Russell, Managing Director and CEO, Vocus Group.

This transformative project will bring significant economic and development benefits to Australia’s neighbours and partners, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. These include a stronger enabling environment for tourist operators, greater integration into the global marketplace for agribusiness enterprises, more opportunity for distance education learning courses and online medical training.

Australia is also supporting activities aimed at improving the regulatory settings, digital enabling environment, and cyber security posture, to ensure the benefits from the cable are fully realised across both countries.

With the Australian landing completed today, the cable laying ship Ile de Brehat will soon return to Solomon Islands to lay a separate 730km submarine cable linking Honiara to the provincial centres of Auki, Noro and Taro.

The Coral Sea Cable System is on track for completion by December 2019.