Business

Telcos put out a tender for trans-Tasman subsea cable

06:59 am on 17 June 2013

Telecom New Zealand, Vodafone New Zealand, and Telstra have put out a tender to construction companies for a new subsea cable connecting Sydney and Auckland.

The trio flagged the move in February, saying the Southern Cross Cable is currently constrained and is seen as a major bottleneck to decent bandwidth in New Zealand.

Last year, the Pacific Fibre plan, led by TradeMe founder Sam Morgan, to build a 13,000 km high-speed fibre-optic cable between New Zealand, Australia and California was called off because of its inability to raise the $400 million required to fund the cable.