Fibre network pointless without better international cables, says Pacific Fibre

Rod Drury of Pacific Fibre. Photo / Warren Buckland

There is little point in having ultra-fast broadband in New Zealand if the country's overseas internet link is not improved, says Pacific Fibre chief executive Mark Rushworth.

Speaking at the Tel.Con11 summit yesterday, Rushworth said the Government's efforts to build a fibre internet network around 75 per cent of New Zealand was a "white elephant" if the international cables are not sorted out.

"The congestion we see [on the network now] comes down to, primarily, international capacity."

To be able to offer customers data packages that make fast internet worthwhile, another cable out of New Zealand is needed, he said.

Pacific Fibre is seeking funding to build a second submarine cable between Australia, NZ and the US. The company's board includes Sam Morgan, Sir Stephen Tindall and Rod Drury and Facebook billionaire Peter Thiel has put millions of dollars into the project.

Pacific Fibre put out a tender to potential builders of the cable on Wednesday as the company announced its partner, Pacnet, had pulled out of the scheme. If the internet link goes ahead, it would offer competition to the Southern Cross cable which all web traffic coming into, or leaving the country, now goes down. It is understood that if there is competition in this market, prices of bringing internet traffic into New Zealand would drop.

State-owned transmission company Kordia is also planning a transtasman cable and is "quietly confident" it will go ahead.

Orcon chief executive Scott Bartlett agreed that competition over international links was essential as "95 per cent of all our traffic comes from offshore".

He said internet companies also needed to sort out their network management domestically to ease the demand on the overseas connection, but that was "just a band aid on the wound" and did not address the underlying problem. The country desperately needed to improve internet speeds.

"It's quite frankly not fast enough. In so many markets, the consumers would describe broadband here as not broadband at all."