Vocus to invest $500M in Sydney-Melbourne fibre route

• Vocus announced a $500 million investment to build a new intercapital ducted fibre route between Sydney and Melbourne.
• The project has no immediate stock market impact because the infrastructure company operates under private consortium ownership.
• The investment aims to support tripling data centre capacity and handling expected surges in artificial intelligence workloads.

Communications infrastructure provider Vocus will invest $500 million in a new Sydney-to-Melbourne long-haul fibre route.

This corridor currently handles 40% of Australian long-haul data traffic and faces potential capacity shortages without new investment.

"The AI era runs on high-capacity, diverse fibre networks," said Vocus CEO Andres Irlando.

The company stated that the project will create over 1,000 jobs and will be ready for service in 2029.

The company recently expanded its national footprint by completing a $5.25 billion acquisition of TPG Telecom (ASX:TPG) assets in late 2025.

Vocus now manages a national network spanning more than 50,000km of owned fibre across Australia.