Tasman Global Access cable goes live

The added resilience and diversity is extremely important to keeping New Zealand connected, now and into the future

Spark, Vodafone and Telstra have announced the Tasman Global Access (TGA) cable is in service and ready to carry vast quantities of Internet traffic between New Zealand and the world.

The three telecommunications companies have invested approximately $100 million to build the TGA cable – which stretches 2288 kilometres from Ngarunui Beach in Raglan, to Narrabeen Beach in Sydney Australia.

The cable has been constructed to deliver more international bandwidth and capacity for New Zealand, and to strengthen diversity and resiliency within the country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

The cable also serves as an important digital link to fast-growing Asian economic markets by enabling better connectivity to the five major international cable systems currently serving Australia.

“We first launched this project at the end of 2014 and it is fantastic to see it come to fruition today,” says Jilyut Wong, Spark general manager of wholesale and international.

“The TGA cable represents a big investment in trans-Tasman telecommunications and a huge amount of work has gone into getting it across the line and in service. The added resilience and diversity is extremely important to keeping New Zealand connected, now and into the future.”

“As an industry we’ve seen tremendous growth in trans-Tasman Internet traffic with New Zealand’s international capacity requirements growing 60 per cent year-on-year and projected 11,000 per cent growth over the next 10 years,” says Steve Rieger, Vodafone wholesale director.

“We’re delighted to see the TGA cable in service and ready to support the current and future needs of consumers, and the growth aspirations of New Zealand businesses.

“This important piece of infrastructure will significantly improve connectivity between Australia and New Zealand, in addition to strengthening New Zealand’s links with Asia,” says Darrin Webb, Telstra’s executive director of international operations and services.

Telstra’s stake in this cable is just one of our recent network extensions to meet growing demand for data and better connectivity in the Asia Pacific region, he adds.

The TGA is comprised of two fibre pairs, has a total design capacity of 20 terabits per second and has 20 repeaters which are used to amplify the optical signals along the length of the cable. The TGA cable was laid by the Alcatel Submarine Networks Ile De Re cable-laying ship.

The Tasman Global Access Cable and existing cable systems in Asia Pacific

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