Australia’s plans to build foreign ties with undersea cables hits snags at home
SYDNEY: When Australia bankrolled undersea internet cables for its Pacific neighbours, it shut out a competing offer from Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd.
But the strategic move to spend A$91 million (US$67 million) connecting Sydney with Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands via cables in the Coral Sea has perplexed many Australians, who must deal with home internet speeds that are among the slowest in the developed world.
On Norfolk Island, a verdant Australian speck in the South Pacific, where a connection to a cable 90 kilometres (56 miles) away would cost just A$15 million, Canberra’s decision to skip the project is galling.
“The amount of money that we’re talking about for the Solomons and PNG cables is about ten-fold what it would have cost to connect Norfolk,” Brett Sanderson, president of Norfolk Island People for Democracy, an activist group, told Reuters.
The undersea cables are part of a vigorous new campaign by the United States and its allies to reassert their influence in the Pacific amid fears that the region is increasingly susceptible to diplomatic pressure from Beijing.
Australia, along with the US and Britain, has also raised concerns that Huawei exposes telecom networks to security risks, a claim the company denies.
Funding for the Coral Sea links comes from Australia’s A$1.3 billion Pacific aid budget, separate from what is set aside for domestic infrastructure projects like broadband internet.
Yet with the promise of connections quicker than those in Australian cities, and as discontent with domestic telecoms near an all-time high, the project risks becoming a political liability.
“If it’s good enough for these other countries, why is it not good enough for territories that Australia claims as its own?” Sanderson said.
The National Broadband Network (NBN), meant to deliver fast, affordable internet, is behind schedule, over budget and underwhelming, drawing thousands of complaints from across Australia.
The country’s average internet speed of 11.1 megabits per second ranks it 50th in the world.
By contrast, the undersea cables can transmit 20 terabits per second, about 1.8 million times faster, although no single user will hit that mark.