Western Australia’s direct subsea links to Singapore have been disrupted since early August 2026, and the dates for restoring them keep moving.
The trouble began when both Indigo systems went offline. Shunt faults occurred on Indigo Central and Indigo West at around the same time, and both were detected in cable segments inside the Perth Submarine Cable Protection Zone. On 4 September the Australia Singapore Cable (ASC), operated by Vocus, failed as well. Backbone provider GSL observed short flaps on ASC at 03:50 UTC, followed by a hard down event at 06:19 UTC.
The break was on the Indonesia to Singapore segment. With Indigo West already out, GSL reported that traffic would take a longer path, resulting in higher latency between Australia and Singapore. One industry analysis estimates the combined loss of ASC and Indigo West removed roughly 100 Tbps of direct bandwidth out of Western Australia.
The first Indigo West repair did not restore service. The fault about 47.6 km off Perth was repaired on 15 September, but traffic did not return, because a shunt fault at the Singapore end had deteriorated into a full cable break.
In mid-September, Vocus said it would repair Indigo West ahead of ASC so traffic could be rerouted before ASC was powered down. At that point it expected Indigo West restored on 24 October and ASC repairs complete on 4 November. The schedule has since shifted more than once. On 7 October, GSL first posted Indigo West repairs between 16 and 26 October, with ASC shortly after on 4 November.
A few hours later it reported that SUBCO had rescheduled the Indigo West repair to 25 October to 3 November. A later guide citing Vocus’s 9 October notice reports delayed vessel mobilisation, with targets of around 1 November for Indigo West and around 11 November for ASC.
Operators attach the same caveat to every date: the timelines depend on weather, permits and the condition of the cables. No root cause has been disclosed for the faults.
