Telstra Digital Infrastrucutre has reached a pivotal milestone in its multi-billion-dollar national backbone rollout, officially lighting up the transcontinental Perth-to-Sydney route of its Aura Network.
The activation connects WA directly into Australia's newest ultra-high-capacity terrestrial data freeway, delivering an estimated 35-fold leap in transmission performance compared to legacy infrastructure.
The launch coincides with fresh modelling from Oxford Economics, which found that while WA's digital economy currently lags behind the eastern states, closing the infrastructure gap could see the state's digital footprint surge from $16.8 billion today to $89.1 billion by FY40.
The modelling found the digital economy would expand to account for nearly 10 per cent of WA's gross state product over the next 15 years, with the Aura rollout alone projected to inject $3.7 billion in local economic value and support approximately 10,500 jobs.
Speaking to Business News ahead of the route's launch, Telstra Digital Infrastructure chief executive Steven Worrall said modern, resilient terrestrial fibre was an inescapable precondition for the state's next wave of productivity.
"The existing network was built over 25 years ago," he said.
"When we decided to build Aura back in 2022, it was a matter of principle that we needed to invest in Australia's digital future.
"Then, over the last four years, everything changed with the emergence of all things AI."
"Exactly how will every WA business, defence, mining, or professional tech services use these AI services over time?
"We're all about to find out. But a precondition is that you need the freeway. You need the infrastructure in place before that's even possible."
The Perth-to-Sydney link marks a critical component of the wider 14,000-kilometre national Aura project, which has now surpassed 9,000 kilometres of cable laid.
Engineered specifically to support the dense compute demands of frontier AI labs, hyperscale cloud providers, and neo-cloud operators, the network features dual-cable route diversity.
The deployment incorporates 144 fibre strands across twin cables (72 pairs each), splitting duties between express and foundation paths.
Capacity across the express alignment cable 80 terabits per second per fibre pair, unlocking transmission scale capable of mirroring massive datasets between east-coast enterprise campuses and Perth's expanding data centre ecosystem.
Mr Worrall said that while Australia's current data entre power capacity sits around 1.6 gigawatts, industry forecasts indicate national demand could scale past 3 to 7 gigawatts over the coming decade as model training and inference accelerate.
"Aura is going to deliver capacity well beyond current requirements, and for many years to come," he said.
"Australia is increasingly seen as a primary destination for AI labs outside the US, and we want to ensure the digital plumbing is never the bottleneck."
The activation cements Perth's status as Australia's primary digital gateway to Asia.
While the city already hosts international subsea cable landings linking the nation to Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, the new terrestrial backbone ensures traffic arriving from international waters can traverse the continent at speed.
Mr Worrall pointed to deep integration with global players, including Google's growing subsea capacity arriving south of Perth, as evidence the city was no longer an isolated terminal on the global network map.
Looking inland, the infrastructure push also unlocks major opportunities across WA's resources heartland.
"Telstra has completed 380 kilometres of regional fibre in the Pilbara connecting Tom Price, Karijini/Hamersley corridors, Nullagine, and Marble Bar, laying foundational connectivity as developers eye the North West for renewable-powered AI compute campuses," Mr Worrall said.
"The Pilbara is an exciting destination. It has been reported publicly that there are proposals to locate gigawatt-level AI factories in the Pilbara, given access to massive renewable energy corridors."
Beyond east-west traffic, Telstra has also completed route engineering for proposed links connecting Perth to Darwin and Brisbane to Darwin, positioning the nation's north as a gateway to export data and sovereign compute capacity directly into Asian economies.
"There's a future where Australia becomes a net exporter of intelligence," he said.
"Today, we export solar energy and dig up iron ore. In an AI economy, Australia can build models and services that export digital capability to hundreds of millions of people across Asia.
"In that world, diversity of connectivity becomes mission-critical."
