Plans for New Undersea Cable Link Between Australia and New Zealand Announced

Telstra will be a consortium partner in a project with Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone New Zealand to build a new undersea telecommunications cable linking Auckland and Sydney.

Design of the new Tasman Global Access Cable is expected to be finalized in the new few months, and when fully laid in mid/late 2014 will span 2,250 kilometres between Auckland and Sydney.

Telstra Global Managing Director Martijn Blanken said the new Trans-Tasman cable would incorporate three fibre pairs providing two-way data transmission with a current design capacity of 30 Terabits per second.

“With data traffic increasing enormously between New Zealand and Australia, Telstra Global is continuing to invest in this type of critical infrastructure in order to meet growing customer need and to provide long-term and reliable connectivity,” Mr Blanken said.

“The partnership is a great outcome for Telstra as the high capacity, low latency Tasman Global Access Cable will supply greater resilience and redundancies for carriers as well as enterprises that are located in Australia and looking for connectivity to New Zealand as well as stronger international connectivity.

“The Tasman Global Access Cable will also enable New Zealand to better leverage Australia’s much stronger internet connectivity. This is particularly critical for multi-national enterprises as Australia enjoys strong linkage with Asia and the opportunities it offers. The cable will also achieve significant international connectivity benefits for New Zealand to link with Australia, and also onwards to the USA and into Asia. ”

Simon Moutter, Chief Executive of Telecom New Zealand and Russell Stanners, CEO of Vodafone New Zealand said the business case for a new cable between New Zealand and Australia reflects the significant growth of Trans-Tasman internet traffic. For example, around 40% of both Telecom New Zealand and Vodafone New Zealand’s international traffic is now Australia to New Zealand, versus just 10% in 2000.

Both companies are seeing increased data content being provided from Australia-based servers by global companies and being accessed by New Zealand internet users. An additional cable connection with Australia also strengthens the business case for international data servers to be located in New Zealand.

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Press Release, February 20, 2013