Undersea Fiber Cable to Connect LA to Auckland

AUKLAND, New Zealand—Pacific Fibre Limited, partnered with Pacnet, Asia’s leader in telecommunication services, recently announced plans to jointly build a subsea fiber optic cable between New Zealand, Australia, and the United States.The proposed plan for 8,450 miles of cable is expected to cost around $400 million and will connect Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles with 5.12 Terabits/sec of capacity initially, upgradable to over 12 Terabits/sec.Currently, poor bandwidth in New Zealand isn’t able to handle certain applications and prices for bandwidth paid by Australians and New Zealanders are high when compared internationally.According to Pacific Fibre’s website, the aim of the cable is "to make fast, inexpensive, [and] unlimited broadband a reality.” The companies will award the contract to the vendor to build the cable in the coming months.The new cable is expected to be ready for service in 2013.