FAQ

Protected capacity is a single circuit provisioned on both sides of the Southern Cross ring so that there is a working circuit and a protection circuit.

In the event that the working circuit is disrupted the circuit is switched within 50 msec to the protection circuit on the other cable.

Planning for Southern Cross began in 1997, with network construction occuring between 1999 and 2000. Southern Cross started commercial service in November 2000.

The original construction cost for the network was USD 1.3bn.

The Southern Cross head officeis located in Bermuda, and we have offices in Sydney, Auckland and Wellington.

Southern Cross is owned by TNZ (50%), Singtel (40%) and Verizon Business (10%)

Under the shareholding agreement, all business impacting decisions are required to be unanimously agreed, and as such no single party can control the decision making process. As you would appreciate, the Shareholders also compete in the retail and capacity resale spaces, so there is a need to ensure that any decisions are equitable to all.

While there is a much older Tasman 2 trans-Tasman system, we are the only effective large capacity supplier to NZ. We charge the same market rate for capacity from NZ to the US and for capacity to AU.

We establish NZ market prices in the very competitive Australian and Hawaiian capacity markets and apply those prices to the NZ market. As our network is a loop which can be accessed through Australia and New Zealand it is impractical (and illogical) to charge differently for capacity from Australia, that can be accessed from New Zealand, to capacity from New Zealand that can be accessed from Australia.

Suggestions that pricing from New Zealand are based on monopolistic pricing principles, and that a new New Zealand cable will lower New Zealand pricing chooses to ignore the competitive environments in the Australian and Hawaiian markets. Our longstanding practice and commitment to pricing the New Zealand market no higher than the Australian market will continue.  

No, Southern Cross is a twin cable network with two cables landing in Auckland at diverse cable stations some 23 kilometres apart.

The primary path from NZ to the US is between Auckland and California. The protection path is from Auckland to Sydney and then on the second Southern Cross cable to Oregon in the US. 

The protection path is only necessary if there is a fault on the primary path and it involves an additional transmission delay of only 13 msec.

It has always been, and remains, a key undertaking to treat all customers equitably. We remain convinced that it’s in the best interests of the broadband community as a whole if a customer can have confidence that the price they are paying is equitable to that paid by other customers, based on the same product and capacity volume etc.

Therefore unlike some other parties we don’t do individual case by case deals, and in some instances, we can’t or chose not to make differential deals that cannot be easily offered to other customers. In that sense we can be accused of being inflexible at times.

There is a very active competitive resale market for Southern Cross capacity and customers always have the opportunity to purchase resale capacity on terms different to Southern Cross.

There are generally inherent discounts in larger capacity sizes, however we don’t currently offer multi-wave discounts as part of the standard product price set as the majority of the market is not at this level yet. T

These are made available from time to time as part of large capacity purchase incentives, typically when sought by some of the major Tier 1 customers.

While not part of the standard price list, these are then socialised to all customers on an equal basis that are likely to be able to qualify for these discounts when they are made available.

No. Southern Cross does not provide the owners with preferential pricing. The owners of Southern Cross receive benefit via their dividend stream, like shareholders in other companies.

While small for now, mobile is expected to generate significantly more demand over time.

At the moment mobile subscribers are growing very quickly but their average data requirements are not, in part due to high mobile data charges.

The introduction of 4G to Australasia is expected to stimulate a large increase in mobile based downloads as evidenced by 4G networks in the US.

There is already evidence of mobile broadband subscribers substituting for fixed line and this trend may be moderating overall growth in capacity demand.

We are expecting activations growth to lift to about 45% pa for a period of about 4 to 5 years.

While increasing access speed will lift growth it is not a proportionate direct relationship as evidenced by rapid access speed growth in the last few years.

Currently around 22-30% pa, across various sections of the network. The long term CAGR (from 2001 till now) is around 35% pa.

The annual rate is up from the low 20% to 25% over recent years due to increasing access speeds and reduced capacity prices.

We are committed to continued long term support and growth of the capacity supply in this region, and an ‘overbuild’ of Southern Cross remains an option under on-going consideration.

The chances are very high that the existing cable will continue to perform past 2025 until at least 2030 and the upgrade path for the cable means we will be able to outpace demand for many years. 

 Nonetheless it is premature to speculate at this stage on whether we will use the engineered longevity and increasing potential of the cable or build a replacement system.T

he most likely scenario is that sometime towards the end of this decade we will look to building a third cable to complement the existing two cables

High. The Industry currently predicts that cables with similar engineering to Southern Cross will be in commercial use for at least 30 years

It wasn’t a new discovery as the cable was always built to last until at least 2025.

After 10 years of operations and an on-going testing programme we had the confidence to extend our operations until the original design life. The continued performance of the laser pumps and technological advances over the
last 5 years gives us total confidence that the cable will perform at the highest level until at least 2025.

This is not the first time we have extended the cables commercial life. In 2000 we only sold capacity until 2015, even though the design life was 2025. Around 2005 we started selling capacity until 2020.

Currently more than 84% of traffic across all rings takes advantage of Southern Cross protection and restoration.

The transmission speed is the number of bits per second that can be transmitted down one channel.

There are typically 20 to 60 channels per fibre depending on the the technology, length of cable segments, and manufacturer.

The capability of a cable is the transmission speed X number of channels X number of fibre pairs.

Southern Cross has 2 cables, each with three fibre pairs between ANZ and the USA.

The capability of the Southern Cross network using existing 10Gbps technology is therefore 6 X 10Gbps X 40 channels = 2.4Tbps.

We do not know, it keeps increasing due to technological improvements in land based transmission equipment.

Using currently available 40Gbps transmission equipment the current potential is anticipated at 6Tbps.

Over time the performance of available 40G equipment is expected to improve and new higher transmission speeds will become available (e.g. 100Gbps+).

We have already tested 100Gbps equipment successfully and will be introducing the technology into the network by the end of the year.

We expect the potential of the network to reach more than 16 Tbps within 5 years

It is dependent on underlying demand growth, but on average Southern Cross has upgraded capacity in some form every two to three years.

Southern Cross neither contends nor limits via quota. Our customers have access to the capacity they acquire on a 24/ 7 dedicated basis.

We maintain supply well beyond expected demand levels and if demand expands more quickly we can readily increase the size of the network through capacity upgrades.

There is plenty of capacity available for purchase at prices well below the retail cost of data.

Southern Cross is the only fully protected fibre optic cable network linking Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Hawaii directly to the heart of the Internet on the US West Coast.

Southern Cross is designed and operated to provide the most reliable and fastest connections possible.

Southern Cross capacity has enabled the broadband revolution in both Australasia and Hawaii.

The Southern Cross Cable Network provides the fastest, most direct, and most secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA.