Cable firm fumes at damage from anchor

By PETER GRIFFIN

The Southern Cross cable which provides high-speed broadband capacity across the Tasman has been fully repaired after being severed by a ship's anchor last week, but the company responsible for the cable has not ruled out pursuing the ship's owners to recoup the costs of repair.

Twenty customers of Southern Cross Cables were left without access to the link for 12 to 15 hours last week when the ship, heading for Sydney harbour in a storm and dragging its anchor, snagged the cable.

Users in New Zealand were not left without service because other parts of the looped network took up the slack, but the breakage coincided with maintenance of a section of cable near the coast of Oregon, meaning Australia-based customers had no alternative route.

Southern Cross Cables' commercial manager Craig Hardiman said the repairs, completed yesterday, were costly. A section of cable on the seafloor had to be replaced.

Evidence gathered by the repair ship, the Pacific Guardian, would be examined to see if the Sydney-bound ship was definitely responsible for the damage.

"We'll look at the evidence and decide whether it's worth taking legal action," he said.

As a result of the unscheduled outage, the company plans to convert the cable network between Australia and the United States into a figure '8', ensuring double protection for the service.

The cable is 50 per cent-owned by Telecom NZ, 40 per cent by C & W Optus Ltd and 10 per cent by US-based Worldcom.