Green light for Kordia's new trans-Tasman cable

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 30 September 2009 09:54

IT Industry - Strategy

In April 2008 Pipe Networks announced plans for a joint cable with Kordia between Australia and New Zealand. At that time it was dubbed, tentatively PPC-2. In its announcement Kordia has given no indication of Pipe Networks' involvement in the OptiKor project. However Pipe's PPC-1 cable, due to come into service on 8 October has been built with an offshore branching unit to interconnect with the planned cable and enable it to share PPC-1's on shore termination and interconnect facilities.

Exactly a year ago, Kordia announced that "Once both companies complete the business case and confirm the commercial and practical feasibility, the Kordia Pipe joint venture will together oversee the financing, construction, operation and maintenance of the cable system."

In its 2008 Budget the Government announced a $NZ15 million capital allocation to be used to support the development of a new cable to improve the resiliency of trans-Tasman connectivity. REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand), the Crown-owned company set up to establish, own and operate a high-speed telecommunications network for the research and education sectors, was appointed as the lead agency for the project and to be an anchor tenant. It issued an RoI In October 2008, but in May 2009 abandoned the project saying the only compliant response came from Kordia and the Kordia project was not sufficiently advance to warrant it entering into direct negotiations with Kordia.

Meanwhile, in late July, Alcatel-Lucent was awarded a contract to build the 8,200 km SPIN submarine cable network that will link New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Norfolk Island and New Zealand and with existing systems will provide an alternative trans-Tasman link. However it would be almost twice the length of direct trans-Tasman link.