The Southern Cross Cable Network is supporting the move to high speed broadband in Australia and New Zealand with the completion of the first stage of a big capacity upgrade.
Southern Cross Director of Sales and Marketing Ross Pfeffer said that “on 31 March 2008 Southern Cross lit up another 260 Gbits of capacity or 130Gbps on each of its two submarine fibre-optic cables that directly connect both Australia and New Zealand to the US Internet. When completed later this year the current upgrade will take our total installed capacity to 860Gbps”.
Pfeffer said “The current upgrade allows each fibre pair to provide ten times more capacity, lowers capacity cost, enhances the Networks resilience and increases the range of services we can provide. Starting last September the upgrade was carefully executed with no disruptions to customer and internet services.”
“The current upgrade and our new pricing are designed to support the big move to high speed broadband in both Australia and New Zealand. High Speed broadband requires both capacity cost to reduce and capacity supply to each subscriber to increase considerably. Our upgrades make this possible and the impact is already evident with existing and new customers recently making substantial capacity purchases from Southern Cross to support the high speed broadband services they provide.”
Pfeffer said “Back in 2000 the new Southern Cross Cable Network enabled Australasian Internet use to reach the highest levels in the world and in the mid 2000’s our upgrades provided additional capacity to support the move from dial-up to broadband. Now in 2008 we see a much bigger shift in internet demand resulting from the move to high speed broadband. The good news is that Southern Cross upgrades enable us to support high speed broadband through greatly expanding supply and lowering prices both in Australia and New Zealand. Southern Cross will continue to be very successful in the increasingly competitive Australian capacity market and we recognize the need to support the New Zealand capacity market where we are the only significant supplier by continuing to price capacity from both Australia and New Zealand on exactly the same basis”.
Pfeffer said “The current upgrade allows the Southern Cross Cable Network to keep ahead of demand for just a short time and we are already planning additional upgrades during the remaining 16 years of the Network’s engineering design life that will continue to take advantage of ongoing technological improvements in transmission technology. Upgrades are much less expensive than building new cables, they involve the seamless replacement of transmission equipment located in each of our 10 cable stations, they are implemented quickly and they greatly increase the amount of capacity our cable infrastructure can provide”.
About Southern Cross
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.
The Southern Cross Cable Network comprises two submarine communications cables which were first commissioned in November 2000 and January 2001 at a cost of USD1.3 billion. They provide Australasian broadband users with international connections to the US West coast where global Internet hubs are located.
The Southern Cross Network has been engineered until 2025. In 2001 total installed capacity was 80 Gbps, in January 2003 the total network was expanded to 480 Gbps and by end-2008 total installed capacity will be 860 Gbps.
With new technology continually improving potential transmission speeds, the ultimate size of the Southern Cross Cable Network is likely to considerably exceed the current limit of 2.4 Tbps.
The Southern Cross Cable Network is owned by Telecom NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon Business (10%).
The shareholders of Southern Cross made the original US$1.3 billion capital investment back in the late 1990’s to support the needs of the Australasian Internet and continued to support the business through times of significant uncertainty. Its network has now become the international backbone for Australasian broadband.
Southern Cross Cable Network has offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland and Wellington. For more information visit Southern Cross at: http://www.southerncrosscables.com
Rosemay Foot
Media Manager
Southern Cross Cable Network
Tel: +64 4 496 3250
Click here to email Rosemay
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