By Peter Dinham, IT Wire
July 27, 2017
New Zealand’s largest telco Spark has completed an upgrade to the Nelson-Levin inter-island cable link across the Cook Strait which it says provides improved resiliency.
The Nelson-to-Levin link is one of New Zealand’s three marine cables carrying data traffic between the North and South Islands; two of the cables are part of Spark’s Network.
The link between Levin and Nelson, installed by Spark in 2001, is 237 km and includes a 212 km submarine section from Nelson’s Cable Bay to Hokio Beach in Levin – and Cable Bay was the landing site of New Zealand’s very first international telegraph cable to Sydney, built in 1876.
Spark general manager Technology Infrastructure Campbell Fraser says the upgrade involved installing the latest optical transport technology at the landing point in Nelson’s Cable Bay and means that traffic can now be re-routed to the cable in the event that one or both of the other inter-island cables fail – securing critical connectivity between the two islands.
