$1b worth of cable projects help NZ stay connected
After years of talk, it is now all action when it comes to laying new fibre-optic cables to New Zealand.
Three separate cable projects with a combined value of about $1 billion are advancing, with progress ranging from the survey stage to final testing.
Spark spokesman Sam Durbin said construction of the $100m Tasman Global Access cable between Raglan and Sydney had been completed .
The cable, which has been funded by Spark, Vodafone and Australia’s Telstra, is the first fibre-optic cable laid to New Zealand since the Southern Cross cable network was built in 2000.
Durbin said the new cable was being tested and was likely to be ready for service by the middle of next month.
Southern Cross Cable, which owns the cable network that currently carries almost all internet traffic to and from New Zealand, said it had commenced a marine survey for its proposed $400m ‘‘Next’’ cable which would run between New Zealand, Australia and the United States.
The survey is being carried out by Geo Resolution, the same former New Zealand warship that surveyed a new trans-pacific Cable for the rival Hawaiki project last year.
Southern Cross has yet to announce it has secured funding for Next. But if it goes ahead it could be the first step in an eventual full replacement for the Southern Cross cable network, which is expected to remain operable until at least 2030.
Hawaiki Cable chief executive Remi Galasso turned up the heat on Southern Cross, saying its $500m trans-pacific cable could be ready ahead of schedule, before June next year.
US contractor TE Subcom, which is lending some of the money for the cable, had so far manufactured 7500 kilometres of the 14,000km cable at its factory in Hew Hampshire, along with twothirds of the cable’s subsea repeaters, Galasso said.
‘‘They will lay the cable with two vessels, starting from New Zealand and Australia, going north, with the first load in July this year and the second in September starting from Oregon.’’
The cable would be fully laid by January and testing would take a few months, he said.
‘‘It could be a bit earlier – but we prefer to say it will be ready for service in June.’’
Telecommunications Users Association chief executive Craig Young said consumers shouldn’t get too excited until cables were laid. He doubted internet users would see any changes initially.
But the extra connectivity was important to ensure ‘‘diversity’’ in case of cable outages and to prevent pricing increases, he said.
Young said it was possible a cable such as Hawaiki’s, which was not owned by telecommunications firms, could ‘‘possibly’’ encourage more overseas internet companies to set up in New Zealand – one of the benefits cited by Galasso.
‘‘I’m not convinced at this stage. We have been talking for many years about how we could be a ‘safe haven’ for internet companies.
‘‘It is dependent on geo-political happenings in the rest of the world and very much dependent on our ‘talent’. We need to continue to invest in developing the right talent for these organisations.’’