The web and New Zealand's place in it: this map shows the cabling for the internet.
The web and New Zealand's place in it: this map shows the cabling for the internet.
This is what New Zealand's supply of internet looks like.
Two cables connect our country to the rest of the world. As an island at the bottom of the world, we'd be otherwise isolated and reliant on satellites for connectivity. In comparison, the west coast of America has 14 cables landing at different sites from Washington to California.
The Southern Cross Cable connects New Zealand, Australia and Fiji to Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States.
It's our main source of internet, and is able to carry a capacity of 12 terabits per second. The network of cables that make up the Southern Cross is in total 30,500 km long.
It comes ashore in New Zealand at two Auckland sites, Takapuna and Whenuapai, and construction was completed in 2001.
New Zealand and Australia are connected by the Tasman 2 cable. It's a very old cable built in 1992 and has low capacity. It provides a form of redundancy for some services.
People, especially folk in the technology industry, fear for New Zealand's reliance on the Southern Cross Cables. If something were to happen to break the cables, New Zealand would be cut off from the rest of the world.
Spark, Vodafone and Telstra have teamed up and are in the process of laying a new submarine cable connecting New Zealand and Australia. The Tasman Global Access will come ashore in Raglan in New Zealand and Oxford Falls, Sydney in Australia.
The TGA cable will feature two fibre pairs with total capacity of 20 terabits per second.
How the submarine cables are constructed. Photo / Alcatel
Australia has strong connectivity with Asia, where internet traffic is growing as local economies grow.
Moana Cable is a submarine cable system through the Pacific to New Zealand being rolled out by 2018 by Bluesky and Alcatel-Lucent.
The Moana Cable, will connect New Zealand to Hawaii through Samoa and American Samoa, while also linking the Cook Islands to the Samoa hub. Bluesky plans to expand the Moana Cable to reach Niue, Tokelau and French Polynesia.
Adolfo Montenegro is the chief executive of the Pacific telecommunications company Bluesky and is focused on improving internet access in the Pacific.
"Our vision is to connect the Pacific community around the world. We do that with a common and shared purpose and shared values... its very consistent with the Pacific Island culture," Montenegro said.
The Hawaiki Cable is, similarly, planned to connect New Zealand to Hawaii and the United Sates, while providing expanded connectivity in the Pacific.
The cable was progressing according to plan, and was due for completion in 2017.
