Pipe dreams again
Following the failure of the Pacific Fibre consortium a month ago - and with it sinking the hopes of lowering the price of internet services - comes some good news. A new venture, boldly but appropriately named, Hawaiki Cable, has appeared:
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Hawaiki Cable Ltd follows international quality standards and uses state of the art technology and procedures to design, implement, operate and maintain its network and services.
Our Network Operating Center will monitor the overall system - including wet and dry segments - on a 24/7 basis securing quality assurance on the longer term.
Hawaiki Cable Ltd is perfectly aware of customers' expectations in terms of capacity, availability, connectivity and latency.
[...]
All these interfaces are compatible with the ITUs recommendations for Interfaces for the Optical Transport Network (ITU-T G.709).
Subject to the closure of our financing plan, our target is to have the Hawaiki Cable in service by the end of 2014
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Ambitious. Not sure who is behind it, but they are ambitious.
The difference between the Pacific Fibre concept and the Hawaiki cable is that the Pacific cable was a simple Sydney-Hawaii axis and this Hawaiki one is on the same axis, but acts as a spine for the other islands along the way which will have nodes off to them. I strikes me as sound concept to include the other nations en route, including American and French jurisdictions as well as independent states.
Pacific Fibre was stymied by an American prohibition on Chinese infrustructure - who will be partnered with them so as not to earn the wrath of America? Then again aren't these two ventures being too Amero-centric by linking to Hawaii? Is this future-proofing?
Auckland to Hawaii is roughly 7000km. Auckland to Singapore about 8,500km. Wouldn't it make more sense in the world of 20 - 50 years hence to have run a cable direct to the main nexus of the East than another one (replicating the Telecom NZ part-owned Southern Cross cable) out to Hawaii?
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Hawaiki Cable Ltd follows international quality standards and uses state of the art technology and procedures to design, implement, operate and maintain its network and services.
Our Network Operating Center will monitor the overall system - including wet and dry segments - on a 24/7 basis securing quality assurance on the longer term.
Hawaiki Cable Ltd is perfectly aware of customers' expectations in terms of capacity, availability, connectivity and latency.
[...]
All these interfaces are compatible with the ITUs recommendations for Interfaces for the Optical Transport Network (ITU-T G.709).
Subject to the closure of our financing plan, our target is to have the Hawaiki Cable in service by the end of 2014
-----
Ambitious. Not sure who is behind it, but they are ambitious.
The difference between the Pacific Fibre concept and the Hawaiki cable is that the Pacific cable was a simple Sydney-Hawaii axis and this Hawaiki one is on the same axis, but acts as a spine for the other islands along the way which will have nodes off to them. I strikes me as sound concept to include the other nations en route, including American and French jurisdictions as well as independent states.
Auckland to Hawaii is roughly 7000km. Auckland to Singapore about 8,500km. Wouldn't it make more sense in the world of 20 - 50 years hence to have run a cable direct to the main nexus of the East than another one (replicating the Telecom NZ part-owned Southern Cross cable) out to Hawaii?
posted by Tim Selwyn @ 12:28 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hopefully it succeeds. At the time of the Pacific Fibre announcement, I did try and suggest to one of the key players that inclusion of P.I. points (providing alternative routing than that through Fiji) might be a smart move), and that there would be an increasing take-up from P.I's in the not too distant.
Fingers crossed, this time it succeeds, AND it has the benefit of being able to be implemented in stages
Nice it were true but the cynical side of me sees some sort of corporate leveraging goin on whererby telecom are pressured to make concessions to Alcatel-Lucent around the South Pacific in return for the non cable.
Rémi Galasso has been pushing variations on this theme since at least 2009 & there hasn't been anything more than blue sky mining at any stage since then.
The fault for this mess lies with the corrupt NZ pols who allowed telecom to be privatised while still controlling the Southern Cross cable.
Even when Telecom Oz now telstra was wholly owned by the Australian people all of the submarine cables and communication satellites which kept Oz connected to the rest of the world were owned and controlled by an entirely separate entity, OTC.
Why? because allowing one entity to control the national internal network and the external systyems connecting your country to the rest of the world is, as kiwis have discovered, the equivalent of holding a gun to your head & letting some other fella put his finger on the trigger and then begging, bribing and cajoling him not to pull that trigger.
Control of all NZ's external networks bar the jointly telstra/chorus owned grossly overused & under resourced trans tasman cable,gives Chorus the new jonkey corp whose Phoenix act was thanks to jonkey's gift of $1.2 billion of tax payers money to restore monopoly status, an invioble position in NZ telecommunications.
Reynolds picked up over $30 million profit share options resulting from the 250% increase of share price in the organisation formerly known as telecom.
The rise was caused by jonkey giving it the 1.2 billion then legislating to protect the corporation's monopoly position until 2020.
If the monkey copped $30 million plus how much did the organ grinder trouser?
In the meantime games like the Haiwaiki cable grift are an easy shakedown for other pacific players. we shouldn't laugh too hard. Whatever the pay off is we the kiwi telecommumications consumer, will foot the bill. What? you don't expect jonkey and his cronies to, do you?
Jeez - we must be related DebsisD! I seem to have had that exact same discussion recently (and just before Stevie created his new monopoly)
1987 Telecom NZ SOE created from NZPO
1990 Telecom NZ Privatised
1996 New Trans Pacific Cable Idea Investigated
2000 Southern Cross Opens
Southern Cross keeps the price of its capacity from NZ to the US at no more than its price for equivalent capacity from Australia. For more than 10 years Southern Cross has competed in the Australian market and applied its Australian prices to the New Zealand-US market. This has ensured New Zealanders benefit from increasing Australian competition. Clearly, persistent reports noted in the New Zealand media suggesting Southern Cross exploits its sole provider position in the New Zealand market, are, and have always been, untrue
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