Commerce, Communications and Information Technology Minister Paul Swain welcomed news today that the first commercial traffic has begun to flow across the $2.2 billion Southern Cross Cable network.

"This is a significant milestone for e-commerce in New Zealand," Paul Swain said.

"I congratulate the Southern Cross partners Telecom New Zealand, Cable & Wireless Optus and Worldcom on making this happen," he said.

"The Southern Cross Cable will help ensure that New Zealand has ample international bandwidth, making it feasible to locate a range of e-commerce activities here.

"It offers 120 gigabits per second of fully protected capacity between Australasia and the United States. That's 120 times the capacity of the existing link between Australasia and North America and enough to transfer a 780m-high stack of typed documents or two full-length motion pictures every second.

"This is an exciting time for New Zealand businesses – we can now do business across the world at the speed of light," Paul Swain said.

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