ITWire

The 13,600 km cable will land in Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles and will, it is claimed, also offer the most direct route between these landing points, delivering the lower latency connections that are being demanded by core customers.

It will be equipped to carry data at 40Gbps per wavelength on up to 64 wavelengths, but will be upgradeable to use 100Gbps per wavelength increasing capacity to more than 12tbps.

When it first unveiled its plans in March, Pacific Fibre made much of its lower latency, saying their planned system would operate with 65ms latency Sydney to the US (West Coast) compared to 69ms on Telstra's Endeavour cable, 70ms or 72ms on Southern Cross, depending on the route, and 87ms via PPC-1. For Auckland US it would operate with 54ms, compared to Southern Cross' 61ms.

Meanwhile New Zealand company Kordia is planning an Australia New Zealand cable, dubbed OptiKor. When Pacific Fibre was launched in March, Kordia CEO, Geoff Hunt said at the time that Kordia would work with the new company on new trans-Tasman capacity. "With the preparatory work that we have already completed on the Auckland to Sydney OptiKor cable, it makes sense for Kordia to team up with Pacific Fibre. Kordia's focus, however, will remain trans-Tasman."

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