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Features and Benefits
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Global communications depend on a network of submarine cables which connect the land-based networks of many countries. The following map demonstrates how the world’s oceans are wired, and the importance of the Southern Cross Cable Network in connecting Australasia to the hub of the internet on the west coast of the United States mainland.
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Southern Cross is Fast |
The Pacific Ocean is truly vast, but Southern Cross brings Australasia and North America together. With a one-way transmission delay of 70ms (milli-seconds) between Sydney and the US mainland, Southern Cross provides you with the fastest and most direct route for all types of applications. There is no faster path available from any other cable - now or planned.
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Southern Cross is Secure |
Our network comprises two separate cables and is configured in three self-healing rings to provide fully protected capacity. The equipment used on Southern Cross has been designed to achieve 99.999% availability for protected circuits, and a single failure of a submarine cable section will not cause a loss of service. This equates to an annual average design objective of 5 minutes of network down-time every year - a significant improvement on the industry average for single strand trans-Pacific cables of approximately 98% (66 days down-time) every 10 years. (In accordance with telecommunications industry practices, the value 99.999% is based on theoretical component reliability calculations based on the expected failure rate of components used in the manufacture of the Southern Cross equipment. This measure has a confidence level of 90% The calculation takes no account of failures resulting from external aggression, whether these failures are caused by natural aggression, such as earthquake activity, or man-controlled aggression such as anchors and fish trawls.)
Such failures would need to impact both Southern Cross cables at the same time to result in downtime.
Based on submarine industry's history of external aggression, the availability for Southern Cross protected cicuits, including allowance for external aggression, is expected to be better than 99.990%, equivalent to an average unavailability of less than 53 minutes per annum.
To deliver even greater security, path switching has been adopted to ensure customer capacity is always live by being transported simultaneously around both sides of the network - thereby delivering fully-protected capacity. In the case of a single segment failure, traffic on protected circuits is restored within 50 ms.
To contrast this to a single cable network, the size of the Pacific Ocean is such that if a cable breaks it is typically out of service for 12 days or more. If the break occurs in depths greater than two kilometres, repairs have been known to take up to 50 days.
Southern Cross also has dual landings (two cable landing stations) in each of Sydney, Auckland, Hawaii. The West Coast of the USA also has two cable landing stations, but three access points for customer traffic connection. By offering two completely independent paths between each of these four destinations, Southern Cross can lessen the impact on Customers of a failure at any of our cable stations.
Southern Cross Cable Network is managed by a dedicated Network Operation Centre located in Auckland, New Zealand with a back-up system located in Sydney, Australia.
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Southern Cross is Big |
Southern Cross was initially designed to deliver 120Gbps (gigabits per second) of fully protected capacity. However, by employing new technology, there is the potential to increase capacity to over 1.2 Terabit/s using technology already deployed on the network, and to 4.8 Terabit/s (protected) using 40 Gbp/s equipment that is now available. Within 2 years we expect 100 Gbp/s equipment to be available increasing the design potential to 9.6 Terabit/s (protected).
Network capacity is being increased in stages and Southern Cross has undergone a series of major upgrades and expansions, with expansions from 20 to 80 gigabits completed in 2001 and then from 80 to 150 gigabits completed in 2002. A further expansion to 240 gigabits of fully protected capacity was completed in January 2003. March 2008 has seen another expansion which takes the network to 295 gigabits of fully protected capacity and by December 2008 protected capacity will be 350 Gbp/s.
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Southern Cross Means Online Access |
Our network is the fastest, most secure and direct gateway from Australasia to the west coast of the US Mainland - the heart of the Internet.
It is a vital link in the global online revolution for thousands of businesses and individuals, delivering exciting new online opportunities for Australasian businesses, and for North American businesses looking to participate in Australasia's growing online marketplace.
The location of the Southern Cross cable stations also provides you with easy onward connection to Europe and Asia via other highly reliable ring networks.
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CUSTOMER LOGIN
Only Southern Cross customers are permitted to have access to the customer section
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DID YOU KNOW?
1,500 km of our cable is actually buried in the ocean floor.
We are the preferred Asia Pacific submarine cable network.
Our network has 462 optical repeaters under the sea and each one cost more than a half million dollars.
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