Ericsson wins three-city cable contract

By RICHARD BRADDELL

WELLINGTON - Ericsson Communications has been named as the prime contractor for Telstra Saturn's Auckland-Wellington-Christchurch cable that will more than triple New Zealand's long distance telecommunications capacity.

No price has been disclosed for the contract, but on previous indications it may be worth around $100 million of the $1.2 billion the company has budgeted to build cable television and telephone networks in the three centres.

Saturn's director residential, Sean Wynne, said the cable would probably be operational between Christchurch and Wellington by January next year and connect with Auckland by the end of next year.

The cable will come on stream in time to service Christchurch, where physical construction is likely to start next month.

A ship using a ``mole plough'' will bury the cable on the sea floor.

The project is the second submarine cable installed for Saturn by Ericsson, the first being a link across Wellington Harbour for the city's network.

The 48 ``count'' or strand fibre optic cable is about four times larger than the Southern Cross cable linking Australasia and North America, which is under construction for Telecom.

Mr Wynne said that while the estimate of trebling New Zealand's internal capacity was conservative, even without data compression techniques it was likely to be able to service Telstra Saturn's requirements on three or four of its 48 strands.

It was possible that a strand could be swapped with another New Zealand carrier to provide additional redundancy in both networks.

Mr Wynne said that while it could comfortably carry traffic on behalf of other carriers, the business plan was based solely on Telstra Saturn's needs and any other revenue would be a bonus.