Southern Cross pushes play on Next cable build

$300 m trans-Pacific cable expects to start operating in January 2022

With shareholder agreements and regulatory permits in place, Southern Cross says work is about to start on its US$300 million Next submarine cable linking New Zealand, Australia and the United States.

The project is expected to be complete by January 2022. The new 13,483 km route will add submarine cable capacity to the Pacific Island nations Fiji, Tokelau and Kiribati. When all the branches are included the project will have 16,148 km of submarine cable. Capacity will be 72 Tbps.

Next is designed as an extension of the existing Southern Cross Cable system. Customers will be able to use the point-of-presence network and access infrastructure that is already in place.

Three trans-Pacific cable routes

Southern Cross say customers will be able to flexibly assign new and existing capacity across the three routes across the Pacific.

Alcatel Submarine Networks has been award the contract to build the new high capacity route, which Southern Cross says will be the lowest latency path to the US.

Southern Cross CEO Laurie Miller says: “The addition of the new Southern Cross Next route to the existing platform will provide existing and future customers with further resiliency and connectivity options between Australia, New Zealand and the United States”.

In December 2018, Telstra moved to take a 25 percent stake in the Souther Cross Cable Network, in a move that dilutes the interest of existing owners: Spark which previously owned 50 percent, Singtel and Verizon. When the transaction completes Spark's share will be around 40 percent. The deal is now days from completing.

Gale to leave telecommunications commissioner role

After seven years in the role, Dr Stephen Gale is moving on from his role as the telecommunications commissioner. Gale spent two years as an associate commissioner before being appointed telecommunications commissioner.

Although there has been no official announcement from the Commerce Commission about the move, the role has been advertised saying the new commissioner will be in place from the middle of next year.

Auckland Vodafone users get VoLTE, others to follow

Vodafone has switched on VoLTE (voice over long-term evolution cellular) across Auckland and on its RBI2 sites. It says the rest of New Zealand will follow by March 2020. VoLTE, also known as 4G calling, means better sound quality and quicker connections when making voice calls on 4G mobile services.

Spark Sport brings customer support subs off the bench

Spark Sport has boosted customer support for those users who still have trouble watching streaming video coverage of the Rugby World Cup. This includes, in some cases, home visits.

The company says most viewers are streaming successfully and the number of people needing assistance has dropped. Yet it says there are a small number with persistent problems who need extra help. In some cases this means using an alternative device.

Meanwhile, the Commerce Commission says it has received 31 complaints about Spark Sport's Rugby World Cup coverage.

InternetNZ's Carter calls for change

InternetNZ CEO Jordan Carter used his opening address to the 2019 NetHui event to call for changes to the internet following the live-streaming of the Christchurch terrorist attack. He says change is needed because the internet developed in a rational, academic world, while today it is used by everyone and all the good and bad aspects of humanity are online. Carter wants to see 'doing good and tackling harm' at the heart of internet governance.