NATCOM welcomes Pacific Fibre announcement

NATCOM welcomes Pacific Fibre announcement

A group of high-profile New Zealand businessmen including Sir Stephen Tindall (The Warehouse), Sam Morgan (TradeMe), Rod Drury (Xero) and Mark Rushworth (iHug-Vodafone) have joined to form an early-stage international fibre venture called Pacific Fibre.

The announcement made today states that funding is being sought to build a 5.12 Terabit per second fibre cable by 2013 connecting New Zealand, Australia and the United States. The service will deliver capacity five times that of the existing Southern Cross cable that handles the bulk of New Zealand's existing international Internet traffic.

Frayne Cooke, Managing Director of NATCOM says "this is fantastic news for New Zealand, its people and particularly business in this country. The current constraints on international data capacity and costs are a major burden to network and service operators such as NATCOM and to the businesses we serve".

Pacific Fibre state their intention is to sell to ISPs and major corporates with an aim for prices that will let them fulfil the uncapped high speed mandate. "Greater capacity, service competition and lower pricing will primarily reduce costs that will flow into the wider business economy and should encourage more ISPs to uncap Internet services" says Cooke. NATCOM currently provides unlimited international data to New Zealand business via its OneSERVICE Fibre Internet network.

Cooke says "for New Zealand to bridge the digital divide with the rest of the world, more initiatives like that of Pacific Fibre's need to succeed. As a country, we all have a vested interest to encourage and support this. The ability to supply and source unlimited, high-speed Internet services at lower costs can only help to grow our international business potential, competitiveness and results".

Pacific Fibre intends to work alongside existing players and planned projects to present a unified approach.

ENDS