The $100 million 20Tbps two-pair fibre subsea cable between Australia and New Zealand has been switched on by Telstra, Spark, and Vodafone.
By Corinne Reichert, ZDNet
March 30, 2017
The Tasman Global Access (TGA) submarine cable has been switched on, connecting New Zealand with Australia, thanks to a partnership between telecommunications carriers Telstra, Spark, and Vodafone.
The $100 million 2,288km submarine cable, which extends from Ngarunui Beach in Raglan to Narrabeen Beach in Sydney, is made up of two fibre pairs with a total capacity of 20Tbps.
Following construction, the cable was laid by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks — now a division of Nokia.
“The TGA cable represents a big investment in trans-Tasman telecommunications,” Spark GM of Wholesale and International Jilyut Wong said in a statement on Thursday.
“The added resilience and diversity is extremely important to keeping New Zealand connected, now and into the future.”
The cable was designed to meet New Zealand's international capacity requirement, which is projected to grow by 11,000 percent over the next decade.
The project, launched back in 2014, will also connect New Zealand with the five major APAC cable systems extending from Australia: The Southern Cross Cable, the Endeavour, the Australia-Japan Cable, the Pipe Pacific Cable, and the SEA-ME-WE 3 (SMW3) cable.
