Australian Researchers' 10Gbps links to US guaranteed to 2020

Stuart Corner
Monday, 08 February 2010 13:10

Business IT - Networking

Southern Cross Cable Networks has extended until 2020 its sponsorship of the Southern Cross Trans-Pacific Optical Research Test bed (SXTransPORT) - capacity on its cable network that provides 10Gbps links to the US for the Australian research community.

Under the sponsorship agreement between Southern Cross and AARNet, the SXTransPORT services will continue to provide dual 10Gbps capacity circuits to connect AARNet to national research and education networks in North America for scientific, research and education traffic through until 2020.

SXTransPORT was initiated in December 2003. The cost of the capacity for the initial three years was put at $44.8 million. What today's announcement did not acknowledge was the considerable contribution provided by the Australian Government to get the facility put in place.

The Federal Department of Education, Science and Training contributed $16.4 million under its Systemic Infrastructure Initiative, part of the $3 billion, Backing Australia's Ability programme. A spokesman for AARNet told iTWire today that the Federal Government was no longer providing any funding for the service.

No figure has been put on the value of the sponsorship extension. However, it will be much less per year than that quoted in 2003 because the price for international capacity on Southern Cross has come down considerably as more competing alternatives have been build, most recently Pipe's PPC-1.

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