KEY POINTS:
While multi-billion dollar proposals are on the table across the Tasman for the construction of a national fibre-to-the-node network, with our own Telecom joining the G9 proposal for an A$3.6 billion ($NZ4.1 billion) build-out, moves are also afoot to improve Australia's international capacity.
But as Juha at Geekzone points out, Telstra's planned 9000km fibre link between Australia and the US, which is to be built by French equipment maker Alcatel, won't link up New Zealand.
So here we have our largest telco chipping in to fibre Australia while its creaking infrastructure back home struggles to serve up broadband for our existing needs and our second-ranked telco TelstraClear is bypassing a fantastic opportunity to improve international bandwidth capacity for the country.
It's pretty clear where our telcos priorities lie - in Australia.
But communications minister David Cunliffe is "looking at" the Southern Cross Cable Networks' near monopoly on international bandwidth capacity. Cunliffe knows that any network improvements nationally will have to be matched by an increase in affordable international capacity.
The US$1.5 billion Souther Cross Cable network, which links Australia, New Zealand and Hawaii with the US, is 50 per cent owned by Telecom, with Singtel Optus owning 40 per cent and Verizon Business the remaining 10 per cent.
Southern Cross is in the process of upgrading its equipment to boost capacity on the network to keep up with demand.
As Ross Pfeffer, the company's sales and marketing director said recently: "We have now sold more than 50 percent of our current network capacity. Very strong demand for Southern Cross over the last few years is now intensifying due to ongoing rapid broadband subscriber growth and an upsurge in the volume of data downloaded by broadband subscribers".
The capacity upgrade will help, but we remain at the mercy of Southern Cross for international access, something which will become more obvious as we use increasingly bandwidth intensive internet services.
Telstra seemed like the ideal contender when it came to the prospect of a second cable crossing the Tasman. Now that looks like it is out of the question, are there any other players who would see a business case for laying a new cable?
Unlikely. It's yet another sign, the ditching of its Tauranga mobile network being the other, that Telstra isn't fully committed to the New Zealand market.
It's not a problem at the moment - there is enough Southern Cross Cable capacity to go around and customers aren't screaming about excessive pricing yet. But demand is increasing rapidly, even if New Zealand can get its national networks working properly, will we in the next few years, be left with a new bottleneck in our crucial link to the rest of the world?
The local tech blogosphere:
Aardvark on the big bandwidth crunch.
Computerworld on the Kordia acquistion of Orcon.
