Pacific Fibre
March 11th, 2010 at 2:10 pm by David FarrarAbsolutely thrilled to just get a press release from the newly formed Pacific Fibre:
Pacific Fibre, an early stage international fibre venture founded by a group including New Zealand businessmen Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan and Rod Drury, announced its plans today, aiming to break the digital divide between New Zealand, Australia and the rest of the world.
Other founders include Mark Rushworth, former Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer, technology industry veteran John Humphrey, and strategy consultant and entrepreneur Lance Wiggs.
Pacific Fibre is engaging in early discussions with cornerstone investors and customers. The group is looking to secure funding and build a 5.12 Terabits/sec capacity fibre cable to be ready in 2013 connecting Australia, New Zealand and the USA – the initial proposal is a cable which will deliver five times the capacity of the existing Southern Cross system. …
The current proposed cable configuration would be 13,000 km long, and have two fibre pairs with 64 wavelengths (lambdas) each at 40 Gigabits/sec per lambda. The maximum lit capacity initially would be 5.12 Terabits/sec, but would be upgradeable to over 12 Terabits/sec as the emerging 100 Gbit/sec per lambda technology becomes reality. The newer cable and repeater technology that Pacific Fibre proposes to use will be substantially more easily upgradeable than that of existing cables.
Further competition and capacity on the international bandwidth front is much needed. Superb to see such a talented group of people come together to try and make it a reality.
I, for one, would invest in it. And look forward to the benefits another cable would bring.
Related posts:
- Pacific Fibre folds
- Fibre, fibre, fibre
- Leading technologist calls for fibre network
- Keall on Dotcom and fibre
March 11th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Was National’s FTTH policy the motivator for this? Incredible opportunities for New Zealanders. Lets hope this takes off, Rod Drury’s name alone is enough to have me very hopeful.
[DPF: I am pretty sure the FTTH roll out is a key factor. With such a huge increase in domestic bandwidth, it makes it more likely there will be increased commercial demand for international bandwith]
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Can we get Telecom to find a contractor to lay this?
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
To put this in perspective: 5.12 Terabits/sec is completely nothing to the just announces Cisco CSR-3 which does 322 Terabits/sec. That’s just one router. Sure, another cable is nice and much needed, but closing the gap with the rest of the world? Not yet.
[DPF: 322 Terabits/s would be about 150 Mb/s per household, and I can't see NZ ever needing that much]
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
needed alright, the southern cross cable is well out dated now, not providing the speed required for todays richer content
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Yep DPR, perhaps an investment. But only if Tindall, Morgan, and Drury ensure the company structure is securely outside NZ jurisdiction. Otherwise some Cunliffe type in a future Labour Government will unbundle it without compensation and fuck the share price.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
Good move and well done guys.
Rod Druy, Lance Wigg et al, you may be interested in getting in touch for an informal chat with Professor J.D. Harvey from the Physics Department at Auckland University. He is one of the world renowned expert in Photonics and Opto-Electronics. Optical (Tele-)Communication System (which fiber optics falls under) is a sub-domain of both Photonics and Opto-Electronics.
They (Auckland University & Otago University) Physics Departments established the Dodd/Walls Centre for Photonics and Ultra Cold Atoms in the last 4 years to spearhead R&D in order to commercialize and help NZ companies who develop products in this domain, which obviously this is your target.
May be you can request a visit to the Photonics lab at the Auckland University Physics Department to see all the optical communication gadgets in there so you can understand what you hear or read about. They have everything in there. Eg, you can see for your eyes of what Soliton fiber is. It is a non-conventional fiber that is different from the normal fibre (ie, the one that is susceptible to band-width degradation or signal wave-dispersion). Well, it is a non-linear fiber, which usually doesn’t need amplification of the signal, since the signal can travel from the transmitter to the receiver, with its bandwidth almost unchanged. In other words, the bandwidth barely degrades while its amplitude may be. Soliton wave is similar to tsunami wave in that they’re both non-linear waves which they can travel for thousands of kilometers without slow degradation of the signal. In fact they’re both based on almost similar physics equations and this is what Prof. John Harvey and his team is doing R&D on. They have done consulting work for Telecommunication companies in Korea, Asia,…
You can see various gadgets such as various fibre cables including soliton, optical multiplexers/demuxers, erbium-doped laser amplifiers (ie, light to light laser light all wave-guide amplifier with no electronic components) and many more. The team there will be happy to show you guys around, especially entrepreneurs such as you, because that’s why they established the Photonics center to commercialize their ideas via NZ companies.
I know the inside of the photonics lab on the 7th floor of the Physics Department, which I used to spend quite a bit of time in there when I was a student. It is also called the clean room even you won’t even see a single dust particle in there, because it might interfere/deflect laser beams in there – it affects experimental result. It requires about 20 minutes or more to automatically cleanse the room (in-wall vacuum) before anyone can go in there. The team there would be happy to show you guys around.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Average cost is $225 dollars for every kiwi.
Seems pretty cheap to me. Except for some of those South Auckland families with 20 kids.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 3:35 pm
$36 per Kiwi and Aussie. Australia is where the (potential) profitability would lie. In fact on an NZ-only basis it would simply be uneconomic.
Still, interested to know who is going to fund this. There are some big players in this sector who may be prompted to make similar annoucements (which after all, cost very little).
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Perhaps they could get Marc Ellis onboard – next time he does a swim for charity it could be a trans-tasman crossing and he could lay the fibre as he goes…
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Hmmm, no sooner does the DIA announce that its internet filter, sorry – Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System, has gone live than this lot announce that they are going to run a wire offshore to avoid it. Clearly they must be into child pr0n. Think of the children and arrest them immediately.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
SteveO, it’s got nothing to…nah, never mind.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
Anyone care to make a wager about the direction of Telecoms share price tomorrow morning after the US listings get dumped like a sack of cold sh*t over night?
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
While I’d much sooner see investment going here than fibre to the node I am still a little concerned (wearing my investor hat) at:
“We desperately need a cable that is not purely based on profit maximisation, but on delivering unconstrained international bandwidth to everybody, and so we’ve decided to see whether we can do it ourselves,” says Sam Morgan, who is also a director of Fairfax Media, owners of Stuff.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
I’m very keen for DPF to invest in this. No way on earth I’d invest my money though.
Southern Cross has significant unlit/unupgraded capacity. They’re artificially inflating prices by reducing capacity, and thereby maximising their profits. Of course, they don’t see it quite that way, they’d argue they aren’t doing the upgrades because the demand isn’t there quite yet…..but actually it amounts to the same thing.
If a new cable comes on stream, Southern Cross will do the upgrades (which are quite cheap) and then undercut the competition using the fact that their infrastructure is already fully amortised. So as an investor, this would be a dog – there is an incumbent with a lower cost to serve who will undercut your prices. Unless the newer technology is way cheaper to run than the Southern Cross cable, I’d say there’s no money in it.
[DPF: Southern Cross will lower prices, but this cable is also aiming for lower latency. And if by 2020 75% of homes are fibre connected, the bandwidth demand may exceed Sthn Cross]
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
This does raise the same old question though – 5.12 Terabits/sec and what are we going to do with it? Just checked back at their website and the only concrete things mentioned are Skype, Flickr and Youtube (which were all passable last time I checked. And Flickr?? C’mon).
I know its a case of “build it and they will come”, but that’s a big leap for investors and Governments to make. I know I *want* faster internet if it’s on offer and reasonably inexpensive, but besides being able to download Youtube videos faster in rush hour, is there any pressing need *right now* for 5.12 Terabits/sec? (not denying there is, just asking)
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
@queenstfarmer
Vote:Think beyond movies and porno
Think of the web as appliance enabler, like electricity is now. Interconnect power management, metering, time keeping, telephony, video services, automobile diagnostics etc etc. The superfast broadband quickly becomes busy moving mass amounts of data from a huge number of web enabled devices.
This is the future, like when cellphones first came out.. seemed a bit silly and OTT in 1990. But that is no longer true.
March 11th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
YAY! John Humprey knows more about this stuff than the rest of the cable universe combined. Brilliant!
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Telecom makes the right commercial decision and fights off a new wholesale provider – ha ha ha, stop it!
I’d hazard a guess there may be dark fibre available to buy across a stretch of that route and that if a cable TV company wanted to have a distribution technology into NZ.AU…
Anyway, it might force the fkwts at TC to get with the program if they want so retail fibre cash from te gummint
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
@Lance
Yes I agree, and electricity is a good analogy.
But I still think it’s a relevant question to is there a need *right now* for this? Or is it purely a case of forward-investment? Also some of the uses that are often cited are indeed great broadband uses but not necessarily of international capacity. E.g. power management & metering.
As I said, I do think there is a strong element of “build it and they will come”. A funny example of underestimating things is this Newsweek article from 1995:
Vote:http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554
March 11th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Yes, there is. Internet TV is one example. Cloud computing/SaaS delivered internationally is another. On the flip side this could be delivered now via southern cross but as pointed out they’re in the drivers seat on pricing and capacity.
Vote:Pacific fibre could be smart to agree some sharp pricing up front for long term contracts (not unlike what southern cross did) to fend that off.
March 11th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
about time..
fibre to door is next to useless with a bottleneck outside the border.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Bring it on …. I say. Here am I sitting on damn dial up speed because son has blown the data cap for the month. And all because of the excess backhaul charges Telecom charges itself for Southern Cross.
DPF – nobody household would use 150Mb/s? Hmm perhaps I am one of those using one of the 5 computers the world would ever need! Actually I think my household has all five.!!
Having the use of a 100Mb/s fibre connection (not at home) I am only beginning to imagine the possibilities – and they are everyday stuff and not techo stuff.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I can imagine using 100Mb/s (but not more than that). But not 100Mb/s from international. I’d pull TV and other stuff, but most of that would usually be locally cached.
Vote:March 11th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
Thanks for the support everyone. We have a lot of work to do to make this happen.
Please note – we are not asking for investment.
Vote:March 17th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Dear David
As you would expect ,i have totally different views to yourself and some of your contributors.These are my thoughts however not anyone elses.
First of all Congrats to anyone starting a new venture.No issues with that despite the inherent risks.
Some questions and comments on what has been said starting with your first comment David
” Further competition and capacity on the international bandwidth front is much needed”
Keen for you to expand on this as i have seen no proof.As I think you know,SX competes with the cables out of Australia and the US for market share.As its a loop the fact that NZ has only one supplier is quite irrelevant as the SX promise to price the same as what the Aussies pay, provides competition by proxy.The Aussie market is highly competitive and SX prices have to be competitive for them to survive.Not only have SX survived in the tough Aust market they have flourished so you dont do this by price gouging do you.
In terms of capacity there is no shortage at all.Never has been and its highly unlikely that there ever will be.There is another cable to Australia which is full but carries traffic nad is used by business concerns.The SX cable carries traffic to Australia and from there anyone can chose a myriad of offerings to the rest of the world.As you probably are aware the real demand is to the US where the web content is,and,as you will also be aware,where the movies and music originates .Yes demand is growing and it will continue with Broadband uptake increasing but that is already catered for and upgrades already in place and planned for are sufficient to cover the most optimistic of forecasts in terms of increased demand.
Does that mean a new cable shouldnt be built ? Hell no.The more the merrier but it doesnt hurt to have a few facts in place so as to ensure the hype doesnt overcome the story.
I am glad you are keen to invest David but i think my Nigerian Railway shares offer a similar return
Onto some of the comments
Vote:Labrator- was Nationals FTTH a motivator for this move? I hope not but it may have been.The reason i say I hope not is that the NZ cable requirement is not enough alone.The Australian and US market is way more important.As I have already noted ,even a major increase in demand is comfortably covered at the moment.
Berend I undertand the SX cable has the capacity to go to 9 Terabits/ second .Higher than the new cable planned .I agree with your general comments but we are a bloody long way from our source material.
menace- you dont know what you are talking about
Queenstfarmer – dead right-without Australian interest it probably wont work.
Rightnow- in terms of charity swims I pledge to swim the length of the new cable if is installed by 2013 .
SteveO – all the inernet porn comes from the current cable now-Nothing changes with a new cable and the DIA policing is a separate issue.
Cauld-Like you i would worry if i was an investor and profit maximisation wasnt a priority.If Morganand Tindall are doing this as some form of corporate philanthropy well i say brilliant well done.If not I would demand a stonger business case and from what I know that could be hard given prices are going to keep dropping.
PaulL I cant speak for Sx but part of your argument is sound.yes SX has unlit capacity band so why upgrade faster than the market requires? The new cable,if it is built will compete with all the cables around the Pacific not just SX.That is a point many fail to get.Yes any new entrant creates competitive pressure but ,in the end ,prices will still be set in the biggest markets which is Australia and the US.The idea that the new cable will just compete with SX is a nonsense,unless,as I noted earlier,its a philanthropic venture and profits are not important .In terms of upgrades,yes you vare right , they are much cheaper than laying a new cable.My comparison would be to liken this to a motorway.When demand increases do you add an extra lane or build a brand new highway next door?
David – you chose your words well re latency-They are aiming for lower latency.Only when its built will that be proven.For most people latency isnt an issue.As for expected demand if 75% of homes have fibre-not a problem .Demand is catered for.
Queenstfarmer-your points are valid but someone may want those features.Lance may be right.
Rightnow-pricing as i said is very competitive and is driven by the Aussie ISP’s
Poliwatch- you raise an interesting point >some think that if their broadband speed drops at night ,its because of the cable!! Totally incorrect.The capacity exists.How the ISP’s sell it is another issue.
Cheers
March 23rd, 2010 at 2:41 pm
My names Stuart and I’m currently working with the ad agency who is supporting Vectors Fibre to the Door campaign – I believe that combined with Pacific Fibres initiatives, Fibre to the Door will become a realistic outcome for all New Zealanders and will provide ultra fast broadband speeds without the fear of the international bottlenecks slowing down our bandwidth.
I’m all for Fibre and all for supporting those who are looking to provide it.
Go Pacific Fibre and Vectors Fibre to the Door!!!
#fttd
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