How unlucky can you get? Optus loses both Sydney - Brisbane fibre links

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 15 July 2008 11:44

Business IT - Networking

The outage gave Pipe Networks an opportunity to push its case for a link into Brisbane from its $200m submarine cable from Sydney to Guam. The cable, PPC-1, is due for completion in June 2009 and will provide direct access to the US with onward capacity to Asia. A branching unit is to be installed for a link into Queensland, which, according to Pipe CEO Bevan Slattery, would ensure Pipe customers do not suffer from any future double failures.

However, Pipe has been unable to generate sufficient customer interest to lay the cable into Queensland. Slattery said, "To land the cable into Queensland costs just $15m...Queensland desperately needs a direct submarine Internet feed into the state to prevent a repeat of this morning's disastrous outage."

He told iTWire that Pipe was not prepared to fund the cable in the hope of attracting customers down the track. "We run a very tight business case," and had approached the Queensland Government for funding, so far without success. He was hopeful that the Optus outage might change customer perceptions of the need for additional diversity.