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SUBCO's Bevan Slattery (left) with ADAPT's Matt Boon
Strategic Business Initiatives Community Interviews Australia’s Digital Infrastructure Backbone Needs Replacing: Bevan Slattery by Byron Connolly and Matt Boon Aug 11, 2025 | 7 mins

Tech entrepreneur, Bevan Slattery, says Australia needs a new digital infrastructure backbone to replace existing networks that are now up to 25 years old.

Speaking onstage with ADAPT’s Matt Boon at Cloud & Infrastructure Edge in Sydney, Slattery stressed that subsea cable systems built 20 to 25 years ago using 12 and 24-fibre pair cables won’t support our digital future.

“If we are to do cloud computing domestically, we need a whole new backbone. There’s a lack of resiliency and diversity and a lack of capacity,” he told the audience.

But it’s not just a local issue. Slattery says providing secure subsea connectivity between the US, Australia and other Asia-Pacific nations brings its own complications.

“We have a couple of big challenges; one is the South China Sea…that continual issue around getting boats and ships in there. What’s happening is that if you’ve got a cable outage,…

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