Southern Cross will provide service on its undersea cable network until at least November 2025.
Ross Pfeffer, Director Sales and Marketing, explained, “This initiative to supply long term cost effective capacity on the protected Southern Cross Network has been welcomed by our customers. So instead of 10 years, customers will now be able to enjoy 15 years of value from their existing and new contracts.”
The extension came about as the result of three factors:
- Southern Cross and its suppliers have the highest confidence in its protected loop network which was engineered to perform to specification until 2025
- Southern Cross has put all commercial supply arrangements in place until at least 2025 for cable station and NOC operation
- Customers have been very keen to have Southern Cross confirm it will provide service for at least 15 more years
“While additional capacity purchase commitments are not required for the extension, customers will need to continue making Operations and Maintenance payments during the 2020 to 2025 extension period (previously their commitment ended in 2020),” a statement said. Pfeffer continued, “Over the next 15 years we expect to continue to pass on the benefits of continuing technological improvements in undersea transmission technology. The latest capacity upgrade, using improved 10 Gbps (Gigabits per second) transmission, was completed in April 2010 taking total network capacity to 1.2 Tbps (Terabits per second).”
Current total demand out of Australia and New Zealand is estimated to be around 0.7 Tbps, said the company.
“We anticipate the next upgrade will be 18 to 36 months from now depending on demand. The next upgrade can be based on new 40 Gbps technology which has already been successfully tested on our longest undersea segments. This can take total capacity to 9.68 Tbps (or 4.8 Tbps per cable). Within the next 5 years we expect transmission upgrades will be able to use 100 Gbps, increasing even further the xpected supply from Southern Cross,” Pfeffer concluded.