How does Bernacchi-1 connect to the rest of Australia?

Bernacchi-1 branches into SUBCO’s SMAP transcontinental network, which links Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. This gives Tasmania dual pathways to the mainland instead of a single route, improving resilience. Beyond a connection to Melbourne, the cable provides Tasmania with a direct route to Sydney for the first time, which is significant because Sydney is the landing point for most of Australia’s international subsea cable systems. The result is that Tasmania gains both greater capacity and more direct access to Australia’s international connectivity gateways.

When will Bernacchi-1 be operational?

Bernacchi-1 is targeted for service in the second quarter of 2027. The project was announced on 2 June 2026, with Firmus underwriting the cable and SUBCO responsible for building and operating it. The intervening period covers route survey, manufacturing, marine installation and landing-station construction. The timeline runs alongside SUBCO’s SMAP network, into which Bernacchi-1 branches, and the company’s planned APX East cable to the United States, which is targeted for ready-for-service in the fourth quarter of 2028.

What does Bernacchi-1 mean for Tasmania?

Bernacchi-1 removes a long-standing connectivity constraint for Tasmania, adding more than 60Tbps of diverse, high-capacity fibre and a first ever direct link to Sydney. This strengthens the state’s case as an AI factory location, complementing its renewable energy advantage that anchors Firmus’s flagship Green AI Factory campus. The Tasmanian Government has welcomed the private investment, with Premier Jeremy Rockliff citing gains in capacity, resilience and connectivity, along with jobs and infrastructure. It also reduces the single-route exposure that has caused connectivity outages for the state in the past.

Firmus and SUBCO to more than double Tasmania’s subsea capacity with Bernacchi-1

Q: What is the Bernacchi-1 cable?

Bernacchi-1 is a new subsea fibre cable connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia, announced by Firmus Technologies and SUBCO on 2 June 2026. It is Tasmania’s first new undersea telecommunications link in more than two decades and will deliver more than 60Tbps of capacity on day one, which the companies say exceeds all existing Bass Strait cables combined. The cable is underwritten by Firmus and built and operated by SUBCO, targeted for service in the second quarter of 2027. It branches into SUBCO’s SMAP network and is named after Louis Bernacchi, the Tasmanian-raised Antarctic explorer.

At a glance

Firmus Technologies and SUBCO announced on 2 June 2026 a new subsea fibre cable, Bernacchi-1, connecting Tasmania to mainland Australia, the state’s first new undersea telecommunications link in more than two decades.
Bernacchi-1 will deliver more than 60Tbps of capacity on day one, which SUBCO says is more than all existing Bass Strait fibre cables combined, and is targeted for service in the second quarter of 2027.
The cable is underwritten by Firmus and built and operated by SUBCO, branching into SUBCO’s SMAP network to give Tasmania dual pathways to the mainland and a first ever direct route to Sydney.
Firmus is funding the cable as part of Project Southgate, its national AI factory rollout, positioning itself as a full-stack platform spanning compute, energy and connectivity.
The investment lands days after Firmus was named among early adopters of NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin platform, reinforcing its push to make Australia a large-scale exporter of AI compute.

An AI factory company funds a subsea cable

Firmus Technologies and SUBCO have announced Bernacchi-1, a new subsea fibre cable between Tasmania and mainland Australia, marking the state’s first new undersea telecommunications link in more than two decades. The cable will deliver more than 60Tbps of capacity on day one, which the companies say exceeds all existing Bass Strait fibre cables combined, and is targeted for service in the second quarter of 2027. Firmus is underwriting the project, and SUBCO is building and operating it.

Firmus is treating connectivity as part of the same buildout as data centres and power, which follows directly from our analysis of Australia’s place in NVIDIA’s Vera Rubin cohort, where Firmus appeared among the early adopters of NVIDIA’s next-generation platform. The cable is the connectivity leg of Project Southgate, whose flagship Green AI Factory campus sits in northern Tasmania.

What Bernacchi-1 delivers

Bernacchi-1 branches into SUBCO’s SMAP transcontinental network, which links Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, giving Tasmania dual pathways to the mainland rather than a single route. Alongside a path to Melbourne, the cable gives Tasmania a direct connection to Sydney for the first time, which matters because Sydney is the landing point for most of Australia’s international subsea cable systems. The full SMAP route and its landing points can be traced on our interactive SMAP map.

The capacity step is large for a market this size. More than 60Tbps on day one, described as exceeding every existing Bass Strait cable combined, takes Tasmania from a connectivity laggard to a route with genuine headroom for AI workloads. Resilience is the other half of the case. Tasmania has historically depended on a small number of Bass Strait links, and adding a diverse, high-capacity path reduces the single-route exposure that has caused outages in the past.

Why an AI builder is buying fibre

Firmus runs a GPU cloud as one of Australia’s neocloud operators, but it is positioning well beyond that tier as a full-stack AI factory platform, integrating compute, energy and now connectivity rather than buying each input on the open market. Tim Rosenfield, co-CEO of Firmus Technologies, tied the cable directly to the company’s compute ambitions. “Bernacchi-1 is an example of the dividend for Australia and regional communities of the investment Firmus is making in our Australia-wide AI Factory buildout, Project Southgate,” he said. “We’re re-wiring Australia’s digital infrastructure to make Australia one of the world’s largest exporters of AI Tokens.”

That export thesis is the strategic logic. AI factories produce tokens and compute capacity, and surplus output beyond domestic demand can be sold into allied markets, which requires high-capacity routes out of the country. SUBCO is also progressing its APX East cable, a planned express system directly linking Australia and the United States, targeted for service in the fourth quarter of 2028, which would give that exported compute a dedicated offshore path. Firmus has paired the connectivity work with a stated “Model-to-Grid” software effort to align AI workloads with real-time grid conditions, part of a pattern of controlling each layer of the stack.

What it means for Tasmania and sovereignty

The cable strengthens the case for Tasmania as an AI factory location by removing a connectivity constraint that has long offset its renewable energy advantage. SUBCO founder and co-CEO Bevan Slattery framed the project as a sovereignty win that private AI investment made possible. “I’ve been trying to build a new fibre route between Tasmania and the mainland for over a decade to bring much needed diversity, resiliency and cheaper connectivity to Australia and the world,” he said. “Bernacchi-1 for me is a great example of how Australia can leverage AI to create new sovereign owned infrastructure capability for the benefit of the nation as a whole, and this simply would not have happened without Firmus’ significant investment and underwriting the long-term operations.”

The Tasmanian Government has backed the investment. Premier Jeremy Rockliff welcomed it as an addition to the state’s digital infrastructure, saying it “will strengthen Tasmania’s digital future, boosting capacity, resilience and connectivity,” and that the state “is in a strong position to benefit from the jobs and infrastructure being delivered.” For an Australian audience, the throughline is consistent with the rest of the Southgate program: domestic ownership, renewable-anchored campuses and infrastructure built under sovereign control.

Why is it called Bernacchi-1?

The cable is named after Louis Charles Bernacchi (1876 to 1942), a Tasmanian-raised physicist and polar explorer. Bernacchi grew up on Maria Island and in Hobart, trained in magnetism and meteorology at Melbourne Observatory, and in 1898 joined Carsten Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross expedition, the first party to spend a winter on the Antarctic continent. That made him the first Australian to live and work through an Antarctic winter, running some of the earliest sustained scientific observations there, and he later returned south as the physicist on Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition.

The choice fits the project. A Tasmanian who pioneered a hard southern frontier is an apt namesake for the first new cable route off the island in a generation, and the “-1” signals SUBCO is treating Bernacchi as a system with room to grow.

What to watch

The build timeline runs to the second quarter of 2027, so the near-term markers are route survey, supply and landing-station works through 2026. The completion of SUBCO’s SMAP network, the system Bernacchi-1 branches into, sets the mainland capacity Tasmania plugs into, and APX East’s progress toward its 2028 target is the item to track for the Australia-to-US export path. The broader signal worth watching is whether other Australian AI infrastructure operators follow Firmus in underwriting connectivity directly, rather than leaving it to carriers, as the full-stack model spreads.