Telecom bites back on cable

Matt Crockett, Telecom International CEO and the company’srepresentative on the Southern Cross Cable has released a statement implyingthat Pacific Fibre founders need to learn their geography.

Crockett was responding to the announcement yesterday that anew project called Pacific Fibre will build a cable connecting NZ, Australiaand the US at a cost of $900 million. They are claiming it will have lower latencybecause, unlike the Southern Cross (SX), it will be a continuous cable from NZto America.

It's a contention that Crockett questions:

“For our part we are very comfortable that SX has no shortageof fully redundant, low latency capacity to meet the needs of New Zealand incoming years. If they think there is a more direct lower latency route thenthey must know something about the seabed and broader geography of the Pacificthat we’ve missed!”

Crockett also refutes the suggestion that SX “is somehowholding back New Zealand from being adequately connected to the rest of theworld, we wish them all the best in their efforts to make their business casefor a new cable.”

He says they regularly upgrade capacity and capability and perunit prices for bandwidth on the cable have dropped substantially over recentyears. “We will watch developments with the group with interest and lookforward to dialogue with them.”